e acerbity than his usual wont; he was in no spirit to spare sympathy for the men who were dragging out temeraire's discomfort.

"aye, sir," blackwell said, tugging at his forelock, and stepped across to the other side of the water-hole, and was gone: a red flashing of jaws, talons, tremendous speed - then he was jerked down and away; the bushes rustled over him once and were still.

laurence stared; jemson and carter stared; the unreality of it - "temeraire!" laurence bellowed, as the men backed hastily scrambling away, their canteens tumbling and water spilling over the dirt - "temeraire!"

temeraire lunged over the dune and nearly brought half of it down spilling into the water-hole, and when laurence pointed at the bushes, he seized them in his talons and began to tear them away. "what is it?" temeraire said. "i do not understand, where did it come from?"

"it was concealed beneath them," laurence said, "or so it seemed; i scarcely caught a glimpse."

forthing was hastily organizing the aviators: they had their pistols drawn, and swords, and stood warily back while temeraire dragged up the bushes one after another, their long spidery roots dangling red dirt. when he had cleared them, there was nothing there: only the dirt, and grass, and stones, and laurence would have thought himself mad, if only there had not been jemson and carter to swear to it, also; but jemson said, "i didn't see it; only blackie was there, and then he weren't," and carter said, "it was big as a house, it was. it et him whole in one big bite, and then it went into thin air."

"perhaps it did," temeraire suggested, sitting back on his haunches; he nosed at one of his talons, abraded by his struggles with the tough bushes, "like a spirit? that would account for why we have not seen them."

"no," laurence said, "whatever it was, the creature was perfectly corporeal, and it took him: can it have tunneled away?"

temeraire raked his claws through the dirt, and they caught: with a heave he brought up a ragged mat of dirt and branches and a knot of grass atop it, which when thrust aside showed a gaping hole descending into the earth: narrow and rough-edged, dug out of the loose sand.

the sides were packed with stones, and plastered also with some yellowish green matter, flecked with larger bits of leaves and of grasses, as though these had been mulched, all to give it stability, although not very much. the walls yielded easily as temeraire dug into them, and caesar was now helping, too: they made rapid progress into the depths, but the tunnel crumbled as they dug. in a little while, they broke through into something like a junction: laurence, crouching by the side, had a glimpse of many passages branching; then the walls collapsed inward and the whole fell in upon itself. caesar nearly slid forward into the depression.

"that is certainly where he was taken, but if the bunyip has retreated, perhaps we may find some other entrance to come at its lair," laurence said, pulling himself free from the heavy sand, which had buried him nearly to the knee in collapsing, and they began with shovels and talons to scrape at the ground around the water-hole.

"i think i have found one," roland said, thrusting the handle of a shovel deep into the earth, a little way back from the water-hole beneath some more of the bushes. these did not need to be torn up, they discovered: when temeraire had set his claws in the mat, he might lift it up, and the bushes would go with it: evidently their roots had grown around and through the mat, a clever way to disguise the lurking trap.

but they dug a little way down, and this passageway, too, collapsed: designed for its maker, and not the weight of dragons or shovel-wielding men, or perhaps only ever intended to be temporary. if there were more permanent chambers, far below, no quick excavation would reach them: the bunyip had undoubtedly fled as deep and as far as it could go, with so much noise and upheaval upon the surface.

"well, are we going to dig forever," caesar said, shaking dirt a little fastidiously off his claws, "or are we going? i am sorry for the fellow, but i don't think we are going to get anywhere at this rate: it can dig, too, and while we are going at it here, it is probably digging itself halfway across the desert and away."

while blunt, there was no denying the practical truth of the matter; and laurence could not call blackwell's survival likely: he had made no sound, and any man would have shrieked, dragged away by such a creature, if still alive. the very speed and silence of the attack which had made it so otherworldly, to be missed even if one was standing directly by, argued for the creature's instantly killing its prey, even as it whipped its victims away to be devoured in quiet and safety.

they considered and delayed a little longer, while temeraire dug in a half-hearted way around the opened holes, trying if by chance he should find a deeper chamber, but these efforts collapsed the passageways even before he broke into them, and the only result was to leave behind a wreckage of sand-heaps and torn-up grasses, and the dunes assembled into new shapes, a deep valley marking where temeraire had labored.

"very well," laurence said finally, drawing his sleeve across his face. "we can do no more."

temeraire's belly-netting had grown choked with sand, during the first efforts, the desperate rush to try and retrieve the taken man. they did not wait to clean it, but only shook and brushed off the worst of the clumps. the men boarded silently and with alacrity; all were glad to be gone.