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"And it’s not like you and Mother, you know," she added, unconsciously heaping coals of fire onto Laurence’s already-burdened conscience "The service is everything with her, and Excidium is next, so she doesn’t ed in lieu of specification, with enough eloquence to make Laurence inwardly writhe "But I don’t want so hiht to be jealous?"
Laurence was left not knowing how to answer her; despite the separation that was the common lot of Navy officers and their families he could not persuade hiht have the assurance that only one party was gone abroad; the other reht be ed, and a wife could reasonably hope to see her husband for long stretches on shore, even if he were absent years at a time
Aviators could take no such leave, even if they wished; dragons did not go into dry-dock And Roland had the right of it: Kulingile would not be used e He had besides the advantage of his iht the particularly vicious talons inherited froenitor, and the spiked tail of the Chequered Nettle froiven his own formation, when the Admiralty had sed Demane as his captain, and the odds that forht, slim
"None," Roland said despondently "They’ll want hiht, since the consurounds soon She’s only been hanging on until the breeders got another Regal Copper over twenty tons"
The path had been cleared: she pushed herself up and went over to shohere theyvines; her shoulders were stooped
They ca suspended in a rope-trap: Deency of the discovery No-one would have disdained a bite; it was cut down and taken along The sound of the surf, which had been ain audible as they continued; and then they caed back behind abehind thehly, Laurence could not envision how Roland and Deht to explore
"There," Roland said, pointing where the sun glea in a small pocket of sand; they clambered across the rocks and stood over the ju nearly all fingers and toes The skull and one thigh-bone rested against a rock shallowly inscribed: HERE LAYS BASSEY AND GEORGE, GODE SHIPMATES, GOD HAV MERCEY
"You can’t say fairer than that," old Jergens ru of complaint which had erave and lifted the vines to expose the rotting hull, and the jagged rock-torn hole
She had certainly been a pirate: when they had cut away the growth and let soht into the hold, Laurence made his way ankle-deep in water and the re around old barrels, burst chests of silk taken fro of the sailors behind him, as they followed him cautiously inside
"Sir, if you would wait outside--" Forthing tried, looking at the beareen with rot Laurence did not answer, but in the well-remembered crouch necessary to so cramped a vessel made his way towards the back of the hold, where the stores should have been, and stopping reached up to pull a corner of oilcloth wrapping away
"Ah," he said: a coil of twice-laid hawser rope, the thickness of a man’s wrist, lay dry and clean beneath
It was no easy task to get the goods out: i any kind of hoist or pulley fro pulled at their legs even if they only stood in one place More than one man fell, and came up pierced and bloody with splinters: when they at last e by four men apiece, some dozen sharks had co in the deeper water
"Well, as long as they are here anyway," Te his head out seized two in his jaws at once and lifted his head, sing down the thrashing grey tails: Sipho had run back to ca the fragile wreck, and the scrap of shore was not large enough for hi to the shoals out in the water, and wait for the out the newfound treasure: rope and sailcloth and even so lohen they had carried out enough tohi off a length to use to net up their takings for Te and laborious task; while the men took the knife in turns, Laurence looked up where the stumps of the masts could barely be seen from between the vines, and below thelass yet unbroken
The vines offered no challenge to a e of twelve Beneath a carpeting of moss and his cautious step, the ship’s deck creaked but did not break, and he made his way to the sh the sternonto a garden vieith birdsong and tiny pale green curlers of vines co panes
Whatever storm had driven the ship from anchor and onto the rocks had not left her captain tis into the hold The rotted re cot were fallen to the floor, and a writing desk still locked lay in a corner alongside a guilty copy of Fanny Hill, which his experience of the midshipmen’s berth permitted Laurence to identify by the much-faded cover And beside them, still wrapped in oilskins, a sheaf of charts annotated in an old-fashioned hand Whatever words there had once been were es now, but Laurence required none: only the scattered e of pirates; they dotted the ocean like the broad-spaced paving-stones of an overgrown garden path, all the way to the continent; the last was marked not a hundred miles from the coast: the coast of the Incan empire
Part II