`` laurence , '' temeraire said , and laurence shuddered up out of an old familiar night-terror : finding himself utterly alone on the deck of the belize , his first command , in a gale ; all the ocean lit up by lightning-flashes and not a human face anywhere in sight ; with the unpleasant new addition of a dragon egg rolling ponderously towards the open forward hatch , too far for him to reach in time : not the green-speckled red of the kazilik egg , but the pale porcelain of temeraire 's .