Moncey was a Winchester, who had slipped the leash at his hatching and eeled right out of the barn door, straight past a candidate he did not care for; and so made his escape from the Corps. Being a gregarious creature, he had been coaxed eventually into the breeding grounds more by the promise of company than anything else. Small and dark purple, he looked like any other Winchester at a distance, and excited no comment if seen abroad, or was absent from the daily feeding. As long as his missed meals were properly compensated for, he was very willing to oblige.

‘Hm, how about you give me one of those cows, the nice fat sort they save for you special, when you are mating,’ Moncey said. ‘I would like to give Laculla a proper treat,’ he added, exultingly.

‘Highway robbery,’ Perscitia said indignantly, but Temeraire did not care at all; he was learning to hate the taste of the cows, particularly when it meant yet another miserably awkward evening session, and he nodded on the bargain.

‘But no promises, mind,’ Moncey cautioned. ‘I'll put it about, have no fear, but it'll take many a week to hear back if you want it sorted out proper to all the coverts, and to Ireland, and even so maybe no-one will have heard anything.’

‘There is sure to have been word,’ Temeraire said quietly, ‘if he is dead.’

*  *  *

The ball came in down through the ship's bow and crashed recklessly the length of the lower deck, the drum-roll of its passage heralding its progression with castanets of splinters raining against the walls for accompaniment. The young Marine guarding the brig had been trembling since the call to go to quarters had sounded above; a mingling, Laurence thought, of anxiety, the desire to be doing something and the frustration at being kept at so miserable a post. A sentiment he shared from his still more miserable place within the cell. The ball seemed to be rolling at a leisurely pace as it approached the brig. The Marine put out his foot to stop it before Laurence could protest.

He had seen the same impulse have much the same result during other battles. The ball took off the better part of the young man's foot and continued unperturbed into and through the metal grating, skewing the door off its top hinge before finally embedding itself, two inches deep into the solid oak wall of the ship. Laurence pushed the swinging door open and climbed out of the brig, taking off his neckcloth to tie up the Marine's foot. The young man was staring mutely at his bloody stump, and needed a little coaxing to limp along to the orlop. ‘As clean a shot as I have ever seen,’ Laurence said, encouragingly, and left him there for the surgeons. The steady roar of cannon-fire was going on overhead.