“Yes, yes,” Iskierka said. “Is he not done yet? Whyever must it take so long, only to peer at the ground; and why must there be so many trees here?”

“As long as they are here, you might let me down to rest under them; I am very hot again,” Caesar put in, from Temeraire’s back, where he had been sternly instructed to remain; naturally, just to make more of a nuisance of himself, he had put on another five or six stone of weight overnight, Temeraire thought.

It was very inconvenient to be hunting over such forested country: they had crossed now over the mountains, and there were everywhere trees, so one might look as far as one liked without seeing a break in them, except for the river below flowing south- and westward, away from the ocean. “It must flow to the southern coast, or empty into some lake or inland sea, I suppose,” Laurence said, looking at them, and at his spread-out maps of the coastline of the continent, sadly incomplete.

“That would be something to look forward to, I suppose,” Granby said, wiping his sleeve across his forehead. “I would not mind coming across a lake. These smugglers must have water somewhere along their road?” he added.

It was very hard to endure the slow pace, the endless trees slipping by, the river winding away from them. Iskierka was of the opinion they had better be done with it, and fly onward straight; and Temeraire found it a grave struggle to persuade her otherwise: he had to argue with himself and not only her, even though Laurence and Granby were so very certain.

Temeraire tried to fly as cautiously and slowly as he might, but several days went by without a sign, and Tharkay began insisting for all their efforts they had overshot and must go back. Temeraire could not quite believe it—they had been going so very slowly—but Laurence at last persuaded him to pause, one morning before they had gone aloft, to let him draw out a diagramme, showing him the fastest pace the thieves could have made: and Temeraire could not deny it; they had gone too far.

They had another three days flying back over the same ground, retreating to the last traces they had found and repeating their search, before at last Tharkay allowed them to continue further: but he had found nothing new. Temeraire landed dully for water that afternoon by the river, full of despair; he could not help but drink thirstily, but he did not feel he deserved it.

“Laurence,” Tharkay said, rising, “a word, if you please.” Temeraire pricked up his ruff, and valiantly resisted the temptation to eavesdrop; whatever could Tharkay be saying, which he should not like the rest of them to hear? And Laurence looked quite serious, when he said it; of course one could not go prying into a secret conversation, but—

“I cannot hear them at all,” Iskierka said. “Granby, go and tell us what they are saying.”

“Well, I shan’t,” Granby said firmly, “and you shan’t go nearer, either; you have enough sins to your account with adding on the vice of listening.”

But then Laurence came back and said, very gently, “My dear, I must ask you to exert the greatest restraint, and to persuade Iskierka to do the same, before I should—” and Temeraire stricken said, “Oh—oh, he has found—a bit of the egg—”

“No,” Laurence said, “no, my dear; quite the contrary, but you must not disturb the trail, nor lose it. Tharkay thinks they were here, only last night, and that they kept the egg here on this low hillock of sand: but he cannot be certain—”

“They are near, then!” Iskierka exclaimed, rearing up on her hind legs.

“Stop, stop!” Temeraire said, and leaping pinned down several of her coils to the ground. “You must not flap and stir the ground, otherwise he will lose everything; we must wait. Tharkay, can you tell at all where they have gone?”

His wings wished to tremble with excitement; all the grimy sense of despair quite swept away. They had not failed: the thieves had not got clear with their prize. “Why, we have only been flying a few hours this morning,” Temeraire said, exultantly, “and stopping so often; surely we must find them and catch them up before to-day is spent, after all. And you are quite sure, I hope, that the egg was well when they were here?” he asked. “Was it near their campfire, perhaps, could you tell?”

“I have already provided you the best part of a phantasy,” Tharkay said, “to speculate the egg was here at all,” but that was only his dry way, Temeraire decided.

Iskierka was all for going at once, with all speed on a direct course, but Granby and Laurence were insistent on the subject: they had to keep flying their sweeps, for the thieves likely should know by now that they were being so closely pursued. “It is very inconvenient that we should be so large, and they so small,” Temeraire said to Laurence unhappily, “for I dare say they are hiding somewhere in the trees looking at us this same instant, thinking, There they are, and they cannot see us at all! in a very unpleasant gloating way.”

“I will go so far as to assure you,” Laurence said, “that if the thieves are anywhere and under any sort of cover imaginable, where they can see you and the treatment you have been meting out to the surrounding vegetation, they are not in the least inclined either to gloating or laughter. Prayer might be more to the point.”

Temeraire could no longer complain at all whenever Tharkay wished them to stop again, and neither could Iskierka; instead they peered over his shoulder, at whatever speck of dirt or dust he might be inspecting, and tried to work out whatever traces he had found. Temeraire saw nothing at all, himself, although he nodded and tried to look wise when Tharkay should point at some perfectly indistinguishable patch of ground and call it a footprint, or at an unremarkable bush and call it a trace of passage.

A few days later, still at the creeping sluggish pace, they had struck away into open country away from the river, only creeks and smaller tributaries left: traveling north-west. The forests were clearing out of the way into scrubby grassland, so Temeraire could not mind the dust, however much there was of it: which was a great deal; he coughed and sneezed as he flew, and when they stopped for the nights.

Laurence was anxious on the subject of water. Temeraire could not let such small concerns distract him, and though it was certainly not as convenient to leave behind the river, if the smugglers had done so, then there must be water. “That does not mean we may find it as easily as have they, my dear,” Laurence said, when the last little stream dried away and fell behind them as they flew, “and you must consider: a small party of men may carry their own supply of water for several days, where we have not that luxury.”

“But there is so much less cover, too,” Temeraire said, “and so it must be easier to see the water even from quite far away, and the thieves, too; if only we can find them, we needn’t worry about anything else.”

“We’d best worry about it, I warrant,” Jack Telly said to the other men, from the belly-netting. “If there’s water found, there’s some gullets as it’ll go down first, and maybe none left for the rest of us.”

Temeraire snorted in disdain at this. “And there is a perfectly nice water-hole directly there,” he added, “so you need not complain.”

It was easy to see: a faint silvery gleam amid the dusty country, ringed invitingly by many shrubs and a few thin trees, and after they had drunk, Tharkay called their attention to the small hill a little way off, where at the summit he had found the mid-day camp where the thieves had paused to eat a little.

Tharkay said, “I imagine they had a fire, here,” pointing at a bare patch of ground, with a little mess of twigs perhaps. Temeraire sniffed unobtrusively at this last after Tharkay had stood to move to another part of the camp, but he could not even make out any smell of smoke until he put out his tongue, and then he thought he just barely might have a sense of faintly burnt wood.