“But also all the trail,” Temeraire said sadly. “I cannot see how we should ever find them again if we wait at all; although I suppose I am being foolish. The trail is lost, and there is no help for it. Oh!” he cried. “I am glad we are never to go back to England again, Laurence: I do not think I should ever be able to look Cantarella in the face.”

Temeraire cast his wings up and hid his head beneath them, afterwards, and did not care to speak; Laurence rested his hand on Temeraire’s muzzle, for what comfort wordless sympathy might convey, and then fetched his writing-case and sat beside him in the dim shadowed cavern the wing-membranes made, pale bluish-grey light filtering in through their translucence. Laurence had been keeping a log of the journey, from the habit of service days; now he added the annotation,

Our present Location remains uncertain: we have been thrown thoroughly off any course, and we cannot be sure of the hour until we have made Noon, if the Sun should prove visible, at present it remains concealed within the extensive Haze. We are encamped beside a Creek, but this may as easily be the same dry bed of two days heretofore, or one entirely new, so I have not put it on the Chart. I hope we will retrace our steps towards Sydney, soon, when Dorset feels Temeraire is up to so much Activity.

He wrote to Jane afterwards, a separate sheet to enclose with the letter he had already begun to her: he felt he could not put off so unpleasant a task on Granby as to convey the intelligence of the loss of the egg. If it had not been estimated so valuable in England, here it had been priceless, where the long journey would make any shipment of additional eggs all the more difficult; and if Jane had fresh hostilities to contend with, in Spain, she would all the less wish to spare more eggs to the very hypothetical breeding grounds of this new continent.

The camp was quiet, except for coughing. Laurence sipped at a mug of grog at intervals himself, the heat a little soothing against the rawness of his throat; there was a heaviness to his limbs, and despite all the game easy to hand, he did not wish to eat apart from a little biscuit soaked in water, which went down softly.

No one had much appetite. Aviators often did not set a regular meal hour, and lately the scarcity of water had made their mealtimes still more irregular, occurring when sufficient number of the party began to make a noise of protest; to-day no one spoke, even as the day advanced and the noon hour must have gone, even though the sun had not shown itself clear. The younger aviators only had any interest in their surroundings, more resilient: Demane had been foraging, and Roland had organized Sipho and Paul Widener—Rankin’s signal-ensign, an anxious and fretful sort of boy—to butcher his findings and put out the meat to dry, sprinkled thoroughly with salt. For their immediate delectation, they roasted a brace of large lizards on sticks: Demane had found them alive but so dazed by smoke and thunder they might be taken by hand.

“It is quite good, sir,” Roland said, offering some to Laurence, but what little of the smell he could perceive over the clouding of his senses was not appealing enough to provoke his deadened appetite.

They had already more meat than they would require for the return voyage; Demane went out again anyway, unable to resist the bounty, and coming back in the space of less than half-an-hour put down his latest trophy, a handsome-sized kangaroo, only a little singed, and then ducked under Temeraire’s wing.

Laurence looked up; Demane said, “There are men there, on the other side of those dunes.”

The men were for attacking at once, “before they creep away again, and come lurking upon us during the night, and steal away another,” O’Dea said, presenting this to Laurence and Rankin, as a petition on their behalf. “Even the little one ought be able to do for them—” meaning Caesar, rather bloodthirstily, and Rankin said icily, “That will be quite enough, Mr. O’Dea; when your opinion is desired again it will be solicited.”

A good deal of resentful muttering followed this, which the convicts did not trouble themselves to keep low; Rankin ignored it roundly, but Laurence shook his head a little: he had seen mutiny before, and with less motivation than the conviction of imminent murder. With Temeraire and even Caesar a little ill and groggy, there could be a real mischief done, if the convicts chose to try and seize upon himself or Rankin, or even another of the crewmen whom Temeraire valued.

“It is not them,” Demane said, loudly and impatiently. “They do not have the egg.”

Temeraire stirred, here, from his restless drowse, and raised his head: when he understood, he brightened and said, “But perhaps they may know where the others have gone—” and swinging his head towards the convicts asked, “Can no-one of you speak with them?”

“It is no good talking to them,” O’Dea said, “what we want is some quick action: if they know we are here, they are sure to run off again, and steal back—”

“They do know we are here,” Demane said. “They saw me taking the kangaroo.”

“Well, he is a black fellow, though, isn’t he; one of them,” one man said; Demane was certainly of sable complexion, but hailing from the south of Africa had no more in common with the natives than this accident of coloration; although Laurence supposed doubtfully this might engender some common feeling, or at least defer the suspicion which their own appearance, so far different, might provoke.

“Are any of you gentlemen conversant with their tongue?” Laurence said, and after a little shuffling O’Dea granted that he had some experience; so, too, did a Richard Shipley, one of the younger of the convicts, not twenty and one, who said, “Though not much more than to trade some rum or some buttons for—well, sir, for a little company,” with a blush.

“I cannot see how that will be any use here,” Temeraire said anxiously. “I might make out a little bit, or they might know some other language: perhaps I ought to come as well.”

“That must substantially diminish any hope of their receiving us in a friendly manner,” Laurence said, and checked his pistols, instead, which if smaller were no less deadly.

He and Tharkay and Forthing took their two prospective interpreters, however inadequate, and Demane led them over the charred dunes perhaps a mile from the camp, near the far edge of the seared band where the marks of the fire ended and the vegetation had escaped. The aborigines had already collected their own supply of game, many dead animals strung together, and were standing near the unburnt ground, holding some discussion amongst themselves: four men, and a youth perhaps a few years older than Demane. Laurence was surprised, when they drew nearer, to see that the ground before them was burning, and evidently by their doing. They were watching it with narrow, careful attention, and stamping out flames which leapt back towards them.

The aborigines received them not unwarily but without open hostility, and when Shipley and O’Dea hesitantly spoke, they listened and made some reply. This at once exceeded the translators’ limits; Shipley said, “It don’t sound at all like, a word or two maybe.”

Laurence turned instead to pantomime and sketchwork, in the conveniently empty canvas of the burnt ground which showed his lopsided figures red against the black of the ash; he tried to draw a picture of the egg, large, being carried away by small men—blank looks only—and then held out a fragment of the pottery.

This opened some species of communication: the aborigines nodded, and one held out a spear-thrower, which Laurence was startled to see decorated at the end with a string of porcelain beads in red and blue, and another of jade and pearls. He pointed at the pistol in Laurence’s belt. Laurence shook his head and said, “No, I thank you,” rather bewildered to be offered such a bargain in the middle of the desert. The hunter shrugged and equably accepted refusal, and when Laurence brought out his map and laid it out, they were willing enough to look down at the chart.