The shots took chips off the rock, and one struck home; the second bunyip howled and let go the rope, retreating; it stopped only to nose the first, still bleeding, and they together skittered limping back up the slope to rejoin the rest of the watchful band, the others more patient, more prepared to wait.
Their effort had not been in vain, if it had cost them: the ropes hung slack and all ahoo, Caesar only making matters worse with his efforts to work loose, and the chewing had worn through a couple of strands of the cable. Forthing inspected the damage grimly, and then he said, “Back to the work, gentlemen,” and detailed off Roland and Demane with pistols to stand guard.
The men straggled back from their panicked flight, but not all of them: two did not return, and Laurence looking up at the ridge noted that there were fewer bunyips watching than before; they had not failed to take advantage, then, of the confusion which they had created. “It is not at all fair,” Temeraire said stormily, “that they will do such things where I cannot even try to fight back; low, and sneaking, and they ought to be ashamed. I am glad that we have drunk their water, and wrecked their territory; I will do it again, whenever I am loose.”
They resumed their effort. Caesar was untangled; the damaged rope was mended, a little, as best it could be, and Fellowes wrapped some oilcloth about the gnawed section and sewed it down with waxed thread. The men spat upon their hands, and rubbed them with dirt, and took hold.
No one sang. Inch by inch, Temeraire shifted. “If you should exhale, just as they heave,” Laurence said, “you might make a little more slack in the sand,” and the trick helped, a little. All together breathed in, and took hold, and exhaling pulled; Temeraire breathing out opened a small gap of softness in the quicksand, into which they might drag him a little further.
“Oh,” he said, abruptly, “pull! Pull harder, I think I can feel a little rock—” and with this encouragement they all threw their backs into another throw, and then all were stumbling onto their knees with the ropes gone suddenly slack, as Temeraire gave a low struggling hiss and managed to pull himself nearly a foot further along.
He was obliged to stop, panting, but he did not sink back; they drew the ropes slack again, and with another heave, now all their efforts united, his breastbone rose several more inches from the clinging mirk.
Laurence swung down onto Temeraire’s shoulder and said, “Mr. Forthing, if you will fetch me a shovel, I think we may begin to do some good clearing some of this away,” and they detailed away some five of the men to the work: shoveling away the quicksand from before Temeraire’s body, to the sides, while the hauling teams yet strained to assist him in the effort of climbing free.
The evening was coming on a little; the watching bunyips one after another began to disappear, as Temeraire made his slow and creeping escape. When at last they freed his first foreleg, coming loose with a gargled sucking noise like a choked drain running clear, the last of them were gone, and when Roland and Demane warily went to look over the edge of the slope, they returned to report no sign of the bunyips anywhere upon the flat plain of the desert: likely they had gone somewhere beneath the earth, to brood upon the failure of their attempt, and perhaps to envision another.
With his forelegs free, Temeraire might more easily exert force, and they restrung the ropes around his mid-section, behind the foreleg joints, to better pull; he began to drag himself onward, little by little, and they dug around the ends of his wings to free them. Then around the hindquarters, as little by little he crawled the rest of the way out and crumpled exhausted upon the solid ledge of rock, free at last, and caked thickly with red sand dried onto him by the sun.
“Oh, how tired I am,” he said, and closed his eyes; they were united in thirst and hunger, but exhaustion commanded still more of their spirit, and the men were dropping where they stood.
Laurence sat down and leaned against Temeraire’s side, heedless of the red sand crumbling over his coat, and closed his eyes; then he opened them again, and looked up as Iskierka came spiraling down from the clouds and demanded, “Whatever have you been doing? You are all over sand; and where is the egg? You might have found it again by now.”
Chapter 12
ISKIERKA DID at least go hunting for them, when she had understood what had happened, and helped to dig a channel from the quicksand pit which drained the water into a rock basin, where they might drink; so she was not useless, but she was still inclined to be critical and particularly of their having lost the trail.
Temeraire informed her with some asperity that he would have liked to see her do better, with a firestorm and a typhoon to be managed, all at once—if it had not precisely been a typhoon, it seemed far too mild to call it only a thunderstorm, and not at all reflective of the experience—and added, “And there was the third egg to be managed, also, at the time.”
“Which was nowhere near as good an egg,” Iskierka said disapprovingly, “as anyone could tell, only looking at it, and now you see what has come of it. Finish eating and hurry up, then, as we are bringing you along,” she added to Kulingile, “which I do not understand.”
Kulingile could not really be accused of eating slowly: he was taking everything which had been left, in gulps the very limit of his capacity. His sides had collapsed into their odd folds again only a little while after they had first swelled out; but twice more during the effort they had inflated and then crumpled once more. Demane was anxious, but it did not seem to have hurt the dragonet, Temeraire thought; at least, Dorset had not said anything dire, though he had examined Kulingile closely afterwards.
“So he might yet fly, after all, even if he cannot just yet,” Temeraire said. “I did not always have the divine wind. Anyway, Laurence wished it: it would be immoral to leave him behind, as I understand it.”
“I don’t see what morality has to do with carrying about someone who cannot fly,” Iskierka said.
“We have been carried about by the Allegiance, ourselves, when we could not have flown all the way,” Temeraire said, “and if we did leave him, he would have to starve, as he cannot hunt; or what if those bunyips tried to snatch him? He was small enough, when he hatched, that they might have managed it.”
“I don’t see why you always want to dwell on and on about what will happen with things that are properly none of your affair, and far away,” Iskierka said, dismissively.
Even Granby, to Temeraire’s dismay, did not seem to wholly approve; he looked wincingly at Kulingile, and Temeraire overheard him saying, to Forthing, “I don’t need to be told how it was: I am sure Rankin was a brute about it, and set his back up instead of explaining properly; I only wish I had been here sooner.”
To Laurence he made no reproach directly, but said with excessive heartiness, “Well, one never knows in these cases what may happen, after all; although, we cannot be too slow—Riley can give us a little more time, he must wait for something to do with the monsoon, but—although, it is just as well, for there was still no news from England about Bligh, so perhaps …” and then trailed off in a very awkward way, and began instead to speak of the bunyips.
It was very irritating, and Temeraire was still tired, and sore; there was sand everywhere sand could be, and nothing like enough water to be properly washed, or even to drink as much as he liked; so he was by no means in a happy mood as the men boarded him again. “I wish,” he said to Laurence, “I do wish that other dragons were not always thinking me peculiar; not that anyone would value Iskierka’s opinion, but it makes one doubtful.”