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towards a decision, Staunton at once began, "Captain, I beg you will not seriously consider taking so great a risk," while Riley, more blunt with nine years' acquaintance behind him, said, "For God's sake, Laurence, you cannot mean to do any such crazy thing."

    He added, "And I do not call it lingering in port, to wait for the Allegiance to be ready; if you like, taking the overland route should rather be like setting off headlong into a gale, when a week's patience will bring clear skies."

    "You make it sound as though we might as well slit our own throats as go," Granby exclaimed. "I don't deny it would be awkward and dangerous with a caravan, lugging goods all across Creation, but with Temeraire, no one will give us any trouble, and we only need a place to drop for the night."

    "And enough food for a dragon the size of a first-rate," Riley fired back.

    Staunton, nodding, seized on this avenue at once. "I think you cannot understand the extreme desolation of the regions you would cross, nor their vastness." He hunted through his books and papers to find Laurence several maps of the region: an inhospitable place even on parchment, with only a few lonely small towns breaking up the stretches of nameless wasteland, great expanses of desert entrenched behind mountains; on one dusty and crumbling chart a spidery old-fashioned hand had written heere ys no water 3 wekes in the empty yellow bowl of the desert. "Forgive me for speaking so strongly, but it is a reckless course, and I am convinced not one which the Admiralty can have meant you to follow."

    "And I am convinced Lenton should never have conceived of our whistling six months down the wind," Granby said. "People do come and go overland; what about that fellow Marco Polo, and that nearly two centuries ago?"

    "Yes, and what about the Fitch and Newbery expedition, after him," Riley said. "Three dragons all lost in the mountains, in a five-day blizzard, through just such reckless behavior-"

    "This man Tharkay, who brought the letter," Laurence said to Staunton, interrupting an exchange which bade fair to end in hot words, Riley's tone growing rather sharp and Granby's pale skin flushing up with telltale color. "He came overland, did he not?"

    "I hope you do not mean to take him for your model," Staunton said. "One man can go where a group cannot, and manage on very little, particularly a rough adventurer such as he. More to the point, he risks only himself when he goes: you must consider that in your charge is an inexpressibly valuable dragon, whose loss must be of greater importance than even this mission."

    "Oh, pray let us be gone at once," said the inexpressibly valuable dragon, when Laurence had carried the question, still unresolved, back to him. "It sounds very exciting to me." Temeraire was wide-awake now in the relative cool of the evening, and his tail was twitching back and forth with enthusiasm, producing moderate walls of sand to either side upon the beach, not much above the height of a man. "What kind of dragons will the eggs be? Will they breathe fire?"

    "Lord, if they would only give us a Kazilik," Granby said. "But I expect it will be ordinary middle-weights: these kinds of bargains are made to bring a little fresh blood into the lines."

    "How much more quickly would we be at home?" Temeraire asked, cocking his head sideways so he could focus one eye upon the maps, which Laurence had laid out over the sand. "Why, only see how far out of our way the sailing takes us, Laurence, and it is not as though I must have wind always, as the ship does: we will be home again before the end of summer," an estimate as optimistic as it was unlikely, Temeraire not being able to judge the scale of the map so very well; but at least they would likely be in England again by late September, and that was an incentive almost powerful enough to overrule all caution.

    "And yet I cannot get past it," Laurence said. "We were assigned to the Allegiance, and Lenton must have