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Ferris.
    Ferris said, “There aren’t cliffs, at least,” in a consoling way. “Shan’t we turn back, now? Those fishermen there are sure to see us if only they look up, and I think that must be a harbor over there—”
    “But there are a few more beaches in this direction,” Temeraire said. “We shall go and have a look at those, from the air: I am sure they are too busy fishing to pay any attention to—”
    He was interrupted in this optimistic speech by a sudden bellowing roar, loud and strangely gargled: he turned back hurriedly. “I do not see anyone in the air,” Temeraire said, uncertainly, peering in every direction: the day was clear, and he could not imagine where the roar had come from. “Perhaps it was only another pine coming down—”
    “That noise was no tree-fall,” Ferris said, urgently, and Temeraire could not disagree however much he wished to do; he turned back towards the bay and crested the trees just in time to find, to his appalled surprise, Maximus and Lily and the others all mantling towards a monstrous sea-serpent rearing itself up out of thebay. The rocks were not rocks at all; they were a part of its body, and it was twice as big as Maximus even only in the parts which Temeraire could see.
    And then Temeraire realized he was wrong: it was
not
a serpent; it was a dragon, with forelegs out upon the sand: only it was very long, and with stubby wings. It opened its mouth and made another roaring noise, a deep angry growling demand at the formation, which carried over the water clear enough, but in some language which Temeraire did not recognize.
    They stood all amazed a moment, regarding one another, very much like figures upon a war-table from Temeraire’s distant view. When none of them answered, the serpent-dragon reached for the second tree, which had struck partway into the water. Lily sprang forward and put her talons upon it; the great dragon made a dismissive snort in her direction, which needed no translation.
    Temeraire beat urgently towards them as Lily raised her wings and flared them out a little: the brilliant orange and purple would have warned any European beast, and their immense wingspan, but it was no surprise if the Japanese dragon did not recognize her as a Longwing, or did not know what that meant; and she was not a third his size. Temeraire saw Captain Harcourt, a tiny figure, lean forward on Lily’s neck and point to the sand; Lily turned her head and spat a thin demonstrative stream of acid, to make her point.
    The serpentine dragon drew back from the hissing black stench and the thin trails of smoke, its own small wings flattening against its back, and then it plunged its head into the water and opened its jaw wide. The dragon, already so massive but slender, began now to rapidly swell up and out to the sides: Temeraire could not understand in the least how he was managing it, and then the dragon reared itself back out and up, and up, and up, and it blasted Lily and all the others with a torrent of water.
    “Oh!” Temeraire cried, “Oh, it is a Sui-Riu!” that variety of dragon being known to him from Sir Edward Howe’s work on the Oriental breeds, but as he flew towards them as quickly as ever hecould, he thought with some strong indignation that Sir Edward might have mentioned the immense—the truly immense—scale; and the book had not in the least conveyed the true impact of the water-spouting.
    Even Maximus had been swept off his feet, and was now tangled and struggling up against the tree-line; Lily was coughing and sputtering, having taken the brunt of the torrent, jerking her head, and Nitidus and Dulcia had been carried into the bay itself and were floundering in the waves. Immortalis and Churki were a tumbled sand-clogged mess flung into the woods, trying to get their footing again; Sutton and Messoria, having stationed themselves back and apart, were a little better off and getting into the air.
    But the Sui-Riu evidently had no intention of