Keynes shook his head. “Another week perhaps. No; do not set up a howl at me,” he said sternly, as Temeraire sat up to protest. “It is not a question of the length of the flight; launching is the difficulty,” he added, to Laurence, by way of grudging explanation. “The strain of getting aloft will be the most dangerous moment, and I am not confident the muscles are yet prepared to bear it.”
“But I am so very tired of only lying on deck,” Temeraire said disconsolately, almost a wail. “I cannot even turn around properly.”
“It will only be another week, and perhaps less,” Laurence said, trying to comfort him; he was already regretting that he had ever made the proposal and raised Temeraire’s hopes only to see them dashed. “I am very sorry; but Mr. Keynes’s opinion is worth more than either of ours on the subject, and we had better listen to him.”
Temeraire was not so easily appeased. “I do not see why his opinion should be worth more than mine. It is my muscle, after all.”
Keynes folded his arms and said coolly, “I am not going to argue with a patient. If you want to do yourself an injury and spend another two months lying about instead, by all means go jumping about as much as you like.”
Temeraire snorted back at this reply, and Laurence, annoyed, hurried to dismiss Keynes before the surgeon could be any more provoking: he had every confidence in the man’s skill, but his tact could have stood much improvement, and though Temeraire was by no means contrary by nature, this was a hard disappointment to bear.
“I have a little better news, at least,” he told Temeraire, trying to rally his spirits. “Mr. Pollitt was kind enough to bring me several new books from his visit ashore; shall I not fetch one now?”
Temeraire made only a grumble for answer, head unhappily drooping over the edge of the ship and gazing towards the denied shore. Laurence went down for the book, hoping that the interest of the material would rouse him, but while he was still in his cabin, the ship abruptly rocked, and an enormous splash outside sent water flying in through the opened round windows and onto the floor; Laurence ran to look through the nearest porthole, hastily rescuing his dampened letters, and saw Temeraire, with an expression at once guilty and self-satisfied, bobbing up and down in the water.
He dashed back up to the deck; Granby and Ferris were peering over the side in alarm, and the small boats that had been crowding around the sides of the ship, full of whores and enterprising fishermen, were already making frantic haste away and back to the security of the harbor, with much shrieking and splashing of oars. Temeraire rather abashedly looked after them in dismay. “I did not mean to frighten them,” he said. “There is no need to run away,” he called, but the boats did not pause for an instant. The sailors, deprived of their entertainments, glared disapprovingly; Laurence was more concerned for Temeraire’s health.
“Well, I have never seen anything so ridiculous in my life, but it is not likely to hurt him. The air-sacs will keep him afloat, and salt water never hurt a wound,” Keynes said, having been summoned back to the deck. “But how we will ever get him back aboard, I have not the least idea.”
Temeraire plunged for a moment under the surface and came almost shooting up again, propelled by his buoyancy. “It is very pleasant,” he called out. “The water is not cold at all, Laurence; will you not come in?”
Laurence was by no means a strong swimmer, and uneasy at the notion of leaping into the open ocean: they were a good mile out from the shore. But he took one of the ship’s small boats and rowed himself out, to keep Temeraire company and to be sure the dragon did not over-tire himself after so much enforced idleness on deck. The skiff was tossed about a little by the waves resulting from Temeraire’s frolics, and occasionally swamped, but Laurence had prudently worn only an old pair of breeches and his most threadbare shirt.
His own spirits were very low; the defeat at Austerlitz was not merely a single battle lost, but the overthrow of Prime Minister Pitt’s whole careful design, and the destruction of the coalition assembled to stop Napoleon: Britain alone could not field an army half so large as Napoleon’s Grande Armée, nor easily land it on the Continent, and with the Austrians and Russians now driven from the field, their situation was plainly grim. Even with such cares, however, he could not help but smile to see Temeraire so full of energy and uncomplicated joy, and after a little while he even yielded to Temeraire’s coaxing and let himself over the side. Laurence did not swim very long but soon climbed up onto Temeraire’s back, while Temeraire paddled himself about enthusiastically, and nosed the skiff about as a sort of toy.
He might shut his eyes and imagine them back in Dover, or at Loch Laggan, with only the ordinary cares of war to burden them, and work to be done which he understood, with all the confidence of friendship and a nation united behind them; even the present disaster hardly insurmountable, in such a situation: the Allegiance only another ship in the harbor, their familiar clearing a short flight away, and no politicians and princes to trouble with. He lay back and spread his hand open against the warm side, the black scales warmed by the sun, and for a little while indulged the fancy enough to drowse.
“Do you suppose you will be able to climb back aboard the Allegiance?” Laurence said presently; he had been worrying the problem in his head.
Temeraire craned his head around to look at him. “Could we not wait here on shore until I am well again, and rejoin the ship after?” he suggested. “Or,” and his ruff quivered with sudden excitement, “we might fly across the continent, and meet them on the opposite side: there are no people in the middle of Africa, I remember from your maps, so there cannot be any French to shoot us down.”
“No, but by report there are a great many feral dragons, not to mention any number of other dangerous creatures, and the perils of disease,” Laurence said. “We cannot go flying over the uncharted interior, Temeraire; the risk cannot be justified, particularly not now.”
Temeraire sighed a little at giving up this ambitious project, but agreed to make the attempt to climb up onto the deck; after a little more play he swam back over to the ship, and rather bemused the waiting sailors by handing the skiff up to them, so they did not have to haul her back aboard. Laurence, having climbed up the side from Temeraire’s shoulder, held a huddled conference with Riley. “Perhaps if we let the starboard sheet anchor down as a counterweight?” he suggested. “That with the best bower ought to keep her steady, and she is already loaded heavy towards the stern.”
“Laurence, what the Admiralty will say to me if I get a transport sunk on a clear blue day in harbor, I should not like to think,” Riley said, unhappy at the notion. “I dare say I should be hanged, and deserve it, too.”
“If there is any danger of capsizing, he can always let go in an instant,” Laurence said. “Otherwise we must sit in port a week at least, until Keynes is willing to grant him leave to fly again.”
“I am not going to sink the ship,” Temeraire said indignantly, poking his head up over the quarterdeck rail and entering into the conversation, much to Riley’s startlement. “I will be very careful.”
Though Riley was still dubious, he finally gave leave. Temeraire managed to rear up out of the water and get a grip with his foreclaws on the ship’s side; the Allegiance listed towards him, but not too badly, held by the two anchors, and having raised his wings out of the water, Temeraire beat them a couple of times, and half-leapt, half-scrambled up the side of the ship.
He fell heavily onto the deck without much grace, hind legs scrabbling for an undignified moment, but he indeed got aboard, and the Allegiance did not do more than bounce a little beneath him. He hastily settled his legs underneath him again and busied himself shaking water off his ruff and long tendrils, pretending he had not been clumsy. “It was not very difficult to climb back on at all,” he said to Laurence, pleased. “Now I can swim every day until I can fly again.”