“We will have to keep close to the Saharan coastline in any case, or risk being blown straight across to Rio by the trade winds,” Riley said. “We can certainly stop at Cape Coast to take on supplies.” This was meant to console him; Laurence only nodded and went away.
Riley’s father had plantations in the West Indies, and several hundred slaves to work them, while Laurence’s own father was a firm supporter of Wilberforce and Clarkson, and had made several very cutting speeches in the Lords against the trade, on one occasion even mentioning Riley’s father by name in a list of slave-holding gentlemen who, as he had mildly put it, “disgrace the name of Christian, and blight the character and reputation of their country.”
The incident had made a coolness between them at the time: Riley was deeply attached to his father, a man of far greater personal warmth than Lord Allendale, and naturally resented the public insult. Laurence, while lacking a particularly strong degree of affection for his own father and angry to be put in so unhappy a position, was yet not at all willing to offer any sort of apology. He had grown up with the pamphlets and books put out by Clarkson’s committee all about the house, and at the age of nine had been taken on a tour of a former slave-ship, about to be broken up; the nightmares had lingered afterwards for several months, and made upon his young mind a profound impression. They had never made peace on the subject but only settled into a truce; they neither of them mentioned the subject again, and studiously avoided discussing either parent. Laurence could not now speak frankly to Riley about how very reluctant he was to put in at a slave port, though he was not at all easy in his mind at the prospect.
Instead he privately asked Keynes whether Temeraire was not healing well, and might be permitted short flights again, for hunting. “Best not,” the surgeon said, reluctantly; Laurence looked at him sharply, and at last drew from Keynes the admission that he had some concern: the wound was not healing as he would like. “The muscles are still warm to the touch, and I believe I feel some drawn flesh beneath the hide,” Keynes said. “It is far too soon to have any real concern; however, I do not intend to take any risks: no flying, for at least another two weeks.”
So by this conversation Laurence merely gained one additional source of private care. There were sufficient others already, besides the shortage of food and the now-unavoidable stop at Cape Coast. With Temeraire’s injury as well as Yongxing’s steadfast opposition precluding any work aloft, the aviators had been left almost entirely idle, while at the same time the sailors had been particularly busy with repairing the damage to the ship and making her stores, and a host of not unpredictable evils had followed.
Thinking to offer Roland and Dyer some distraction, Laurence had called the two of them up to the dragondeck shortly before the arrival in Madeira, to examine them in their schoolwork. They had stared at him with such guilty expressions that he was not surprised to find they had neglected their studies entirely since having become his runners: very little notion of arithmetic, none at all of the more advanced mathematics, no French whatsoever, and when he handed them Gibbon’s book, which he had brought to the deck meaning to read to Temeraire later, Roland stuttered so over the words that Temeraire put back his ruff and began to correct her from memory. Dyer was a little better off: when quizzed, he at least had his multiplication tables mostly by heart, and some sense of grammar; Roland stumbled over anything higher than eight and professed herself surprised to learn that speech even had parts. Laurence no longer wondered how he would fill their time; he only reproached himself for having been so lax about their schooling, and set about his newly self-appointed task as their schoolmaster with a will.
The runners had always been rather pets of the entire crew; since Morgan’s death, Roland and Dyer had been cosseted still more. Their daily struggles with participles and division were now looked on by the other aviators with great amusement, but only until the Allegiance’s midshipmen made some jeering noises. Then the ensigns took it on themselves to repay the insult, and a few scuffles ensued in dark corners of the ship.
At first, Laurence and Riley entertained themselves by a comparison of the wooden excuses which were offered them for the collection of black eyes and bleeding lips. But the petty squabbling began to take a more ominous shape when older men started to present similar excuses: a deeper resentment on the sailors’ part, founded in no small part in the uneven balance of labor and their fear of Temeraire, was finding expression in the near-daily exchange of insults, no longer even touching upon Roland and Dyer’s studies. In their turn, the aviators had taken a reciprocal offense at the complete lack of gratitude that seemed to them due to Temeraire’s valor.
The first true explosion occurred just as they began to make the turn eastward, past Cape Palmas, and headed towards Cape Coast. Laurence was drowsing on the dragondeck, sheltered by the shadow of Temeraire’s body from the direct force of the sun; he did not see himself what had happened, but he was roused by a heavy thump, sudden shouts and cries, and climbing hurriedly to his feet saw the men in a ring. Martin was gripping Blythe, the armorer’s mate, by the arm; one of Riley’s officers, an older midshipman, was stretched out on the deck, and Lord Purbeck was shouting from the poop deck, “Set that man in irons, Cornell, straightaway.”
Temeraire’s head came straight up, and he roared: not raising the divine wind, thankfully, but he made a great and thundering noise nonetheless, and the men all scattered back from it, many with pale faces. “No one is putting any of my crew in prison,” Temeraire said angrily, his tail lashing the air; he raised himself and spread wide his wings, and the whole ship shivered: the wind was blowing out from the Saharan coast, abaft the beam, the sails close-hauled to keep them on their southeast course, and Temeraire’s wings were acting as an independent and contrary sail.
“Temeraire! Stop that at once; at once, do you hear me?” Laurence said sharply; he had never spoken so, not since the first weeks of Temeraire’s existence, and Temeraire dropped down in surprise, his wings furling in tight on instinct. “Purbeck, you will leave my men to me, if you please; stand down, master-at-arms,” Laurence said, snapping orders quickly: he did not mean to allow the scene to progress further, nor turn into some open struggle between the aviators and seamen. “Mr. Ferris,” he said, “take Blythe below and confine him.”
“Yes, sir,” Ferris said, already shoving through the crowd, and pushing the aviators back around him, breaking up the knots of angry men even before he reached Blythe.
Watching the progress with hard eyes, Laurence added, loudly, “Mr. Martin, to my cabin at once. Back to your work, all of you; Mr. Keynes, come here.”
He stayed another moment, but he was satisfied: the pressing danger had been averted. He turned from the rail, trusting to ordinary discipline to break up the rest of the crowd. But Temeraire was huddled down very nearly flat, looking at him with a startled, unhappy expression; Laurence reached out to him and flinched as Temeraire twitched away: not out of reach, but the impulse plainly visible.
“Forgive me,” Laurence said, dropping his hand, a tightness in his throat. “Temeraire,” he said, and stopped; he did not know what to say, for Temeraire could not be allowed to act so: he might have caused real damage to the ship, and aside from that if he carried on in such a fashion the crew would shortly grow too terrified of him to do their work. “You have not hurt yourself?” he asked, instead, as Keynes hurried over.