`` of course you are not slaves , '' temeraire said , in dismissive tones , to rather better effect , `` you are of my crew , '' an assumption springing from his native possessiveness , which serenely made them his own in spite of all the obvious impracticality of such an arrangement , and forced laurence to recognize he could see no other solution , which should give them the respectability they might have earned , among their own tribe , for the services which they had performed .