‘And,’ Temeraire said, ‘you are disobeying orders again, I am sure of it: Granby would never let you come.’

‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘one cannot always be obeying orders. When will we be there?’

‘It is this dratted egg,’ Granby said to Laurence. ‘She is set on it having fire, and the divine wind. I have tried and tried to tell her it don't work so, but she will not listen, and now here we are.’

‘You may take her off at Gibraltar,’ Laurence suggested.

‘Oh yes, if she will choose to go,’ Granby said, and sat down upon an emptied cask of water, limp with defeat.

Iskierka, having eaten a pig, had already gone to sleep; her steadily issuing cloud of vapour spilling over the bow and trailing away along either side of the ship. Temeraire had pushed her to one half the dragondeck, as best he could, and now sat coiled up and disgruntled, with his ruff flattened against his neck.

‘You may be glad of the company before we have crossed the line,’ Laurence said, by way of comfort.

‘I will not, even if I am very bored; any more than I would be glad of a typhoon,’ Temeraire said, broodingly. ‘And I am sure she will be a bad influence upon the eggs.’

Laurence looked at Iskierka and at Granby, who was presently drowning his sorrow in a glass of rum. Tharkay had come on deck and prudently caught one of the runners, to send for a bottle. ‘At least you need not fear for their safety,’ he suggested.

‘Unless she should set the ship alight,’ Temeraire said, a good deal too loudly for the comfort of any sailor within earshot, which simply omitted those two decks below, or in the stern.

‘Then I am afraid you must study philosophy,’ Laurence said, ‘and learn to bear the misfortune. I hope the arrangement is at least preferable to the breeding-grounds.’

‘Oh! anything might be better than that, and still be dreadful,’ Temeraire said, and with a sigh settled his head down forward. ‘Pray, Laurence; let us have the Principia Mathematica, as there is nothing better.’

‘Again?’ Laurence said, but sent Roland down for the book. She returned scowling at the state of his quarters, but with a shake of his head he dissuaded her from any word to Temeraire. ‘Where shall I begin?’ he asked, but did not immediately hear the answer. he looked down his fingers caught on the delicate pages of the book, and he traced the embossed lines of the heavy cover, leather stamped with gilt. It was the same book under his hands, with the salt wind in his face, and Temeraire at his side; nothing had changed outwardly, and yet he felt as wholly altered as if he had been reborn, since the last time he had set foot upon the deck of a ship. It seemed that a tide, coming in high and fast, had swept clean the sand.