The Book of Dragons
dragon made a bound, beginning a scream of rage that was like all the
engines of all the railways in England. But it never uttered the second
half of that scream, for now it knew suddenly that it was sleepy--it
turned to hurry back to dry land, because sleeping near whirlpools is so
unsafe. But before it reached the shore sleep caught it and turned it to
stone. Nigel, seeing this, ran shoreward for his life--and the tide
began to flow in, and the time of the whirlpools' sleep was nearly over,
and he stumbled and he waded and he swam, and the Princess pulled for
dear life at the cord in her hand, and pulled him up on to the dry shelf
of rock just as the great sea dashed in and made itself once more into
the girdle of Nine Whirlpools all around the island.
But the dragon was asleep under the whirlpools, and when he woke up from
being asleep he found he was drowned, so there was an end of him.
"Now, there's only the griffin," said Nigel. And the Princess said:
"Yes--only--" And she kissed Nigel and went back to sew the last leaf of
the last lily on the bosom of her wedding gown. She thought and thought
of what was written on the stone about the griffin being artificial--and
next day she said to Nigel: "You know a griffin is half a lion and half
an eagle, and the other two halves when they've joined make the
leo-griff. But I've never seen him. Yet I have an idea."
So they talked it over and arranged everything.
When the griffin fell asleep that afternoon at teatime, Nigel went
softly behind him and trod on his tail, and at the same time the
Princess cried: "Look out! There's a lion behind you."
And the griffin, waking suddenly from his dreams, twisted his large
neck around to look for the lion, saw a lion's flank, and fastened its
eagle beak in it. For the griffin had been artificially made by the
King-enchanter, and the two halves had never really got used to each
other. So now the eagle half of the griffin, who was still rather
sleepy, believed that it was fighting a lion, and the lion part, being
half asleep, thought it was fighting an eagle, and the whole griffin in
its deep drowsiness hadn't the sense to pull itself together and
remember what it was made of. So the griffin rolled over and over, one
end of it fighting with the other, till the eagle end pecked the lion
end to death, and the lion end tore the eagle end with its claws till it
died. And so the griffin that was made of a lion and an eagle perished,
exactly as if it had been made of Kilkenny cats.
"Poor griffin," said the Princess, "it was very good at the housework. I
always liked it better than the dragon: It wasn't so hot-tempered."
At that moment there was a soft, silky rush behind the Princess, and
there was her mother, the Queen, who had slipped out of the stone statue
at the moment the griffin was dead, and now came hurrying to take her
dear daughter in her arms. The witch was clambering slowly off her
pedestal. She was a little stiff from standing still so long.
When they had all explained everything over and over to each other as
many times as was good for them, the witch said: "Well, but what about
the whirlpools?"
And Nigel said he didn't know. Then the witch said: "I'm not a witch
anymore. I'm only a happy old woman, but I know some things still. Those
whirlpools were made by the enchanter-King's dropping nine drops of his
blood into the sea. And his blood was so wicked that the sea has been
trying ever since to get rid of it, and that made the whirlpools. Now
you've only got to go out at low tide."
So Nigel understood and went out at low tide, and found in the sandy
hollow left by the first whirlpool a great red ruby. That was the first
drop of the wicked King's blood. The next day Nigel found another, and
next day another, and so on till the ninth day, and then the sea was as
smooth as glass.
The nine rubies were used afterwards in agriculture. You had only to
throw them out into a field if you wanted it plowed. Then the whole
surface of the land turned itself over in its anxiety to get rid of
something so wicked, and in the morning the field was found to be plowed
as thoroughly as any young man at Oxford. So the wicked King did some
good after all.
When the sea was smooth, ships came from far and wide, bringing people
to hear the wonderful story. And a beautiful palace was built, and the
Princess was married to Nigel in her gold dress, and they all lived
happily as long as was good for them.
The dragon still lies, a stone dragon on the sand, and at low tide the
little children play around him and over him. But the pieces that were
left of the griffin were buried under the herb-bed in the palace garden,
because it had been so good at housework, and it wasn't its fault that
it had been made so badly and put to such poor work as guarding a lady
from her lover.
I have no doubt that you will wish to know what the Princess lived on
during the long years when the dragon did the cooking. My dear, she
lived on her income--and that is a thing that a great many people would
like to be able to do.
VI. The Dragon Tamers
There was once an old, old castle--it was so old that its walls and
towers and turrets and gateways and arches had crumbled to ruins, and of
all its old splendor there were only two little rooms left; and it was
here that John the blacksmith had set up his forge. He was too poor to
live in a proper house, and no one asked any rent for the rooms in the
ruin, because all the lords of the castle were dead and gone this many a
year. So there John blew his bellows and hammered his iron and did all
the work which came his way. This was not much, because most of the
trade went to the mayor of the town, who was also a blacksmith in quite
a large way of business, and had his huge forge facing the square of the
town, and had twelve apprentices, all hammering like a nest of
woodpeckers, and twelve journeymen to order the apprentices about, and a
patent forge and a self-acting hammer and electric bellows, and all
things handsome about him. So of course the townspeople, whenever they
wanted a horse shod or a shaft mended, went to the mayor. John the
blacksmith struggled on as best he could, with a few odd jobs from
travelers and strangers who did not know what a superior forge the
mayor's was. The two rooms were warm and weather-tight, but not very
large; so the blacksmith got into the way of keeping his old iron, his
odds and ends, his fagots, and his twopence worth of coal in the great
dungeon down under the castle. It was a very fine dungeon indeed, with a
handsome vaulted roof and big iron rings whose staples were built into
the wall, very strong and convenient for tying captives to, and at one
end was a broken flight of wide steps leading down no one knew where.
Even the lords of the castle in the good old times had never known where
those steps led to, but every now and then they would kick a prisoner
down the steps in their lighthearted, hopeful way, and sure enough, the
prisoners never came back. The blacksmith had never dared to go beyond
the seventh step, and no more have I--so I know no more than he did what
was at the bottom of those stairs.
John the blacksmith had a wife and a little baby. When his wife was not
doing the housework she used to nurse the baby and cry, remembering the
happy days when she lived with her father, who kept seventeen cows and
lived quite in the country, and when John used to come courting her in
the summer evenings, as smart as smart, with a posy in his buttonhole.
And now John's hair was getting gray, and there was hardly ever enough
to eat.
As for the baby, it cried a good deal at odd times; but at night, when
its mother had settled down to sleep, it would always begin to cry,
quite as a matter of course, so that she hardly got any rest at all.
This made her very tired.
The baby could make up for its bad nights during the day if it liked,
but the poor mother couldn't. So whenever she had nothing to do she used
to sit and cry, because she was tired out with work and worry.
One evening the blacksmith was busy with his forge. He was making a
goat-shoe for the goat of a very rich lady, who wished to see how the
goat liked being shod, and also whether the shoe would come to fivepence
or sevenpence before she ordered the whole set. This was the only order
John had had that week. And as he worked his wife sat and nursed the
baby, who, for a wonder, was not crying.
Presently, over the noise of the bellows and over the clank of the iron,
there came another sound. The blacksmith and his wife looked at each
other.
"I heard nothing," said he.
"Neither did I," said she.
But the noise grew louder--and the two were so anxious not to hear it
that he hammered away at the goat-shoe harder than he had ever hammered
in his life, and she began to sing to the baby--a thing she had not had
the heart to do for weeks.
But through the blowing and hammering and singing the noise came louder
and louder, and the more they tried not to hear it, the more they had
to. It was like the noise of some great creature purring, purring,
purring--and the reason they did not want to believe they really heard
it was that it came from the great dungeon down below, where the old
iron was, and the firewood and the twopence worth of coal, and the
broken steps that went down into the dark and ended no one knew where.
"It can't be anything in the dungeon," said the blacksmith, wiping his
face. "Why, I shall have to go down there after more coals in a minute."
"There isn't anything there, of course. How could there be?" said his
wife. And they tried so hard to believe that there could be nothing
there that presently they very nearly did believe it.
Then the blacksmith took his shovel in one hand and his riveting hammer
in the other, and hung the old stable lantern on his little finger, and
went down to get the coals.
"I am not taking the hammer because I think there is something there,"
said he, "but it is handy for breaking the large lumps of coal."
"I quite understand," said his wife, who had brought the coal home in
her apron that very afternoon, and knew that it was all coal dust.
So he went down the winding stairs to the dungeon and stood at the
bottom of the steps, holding the lantern above his head just to see that
the dungeon really was empty, as usual. Half of it was empty as usual,
except for the old iron and odds and ends, and the firewood and the
coals. But the other side was not empty. It was quite full, and what it
was full of was Dragon.
"It must have come up those nasty broken steps from goodness knows
where," said the blacksmith to himself, trembling all over, as he tried
to creep back up the winding stairs.
But the dragon was too quick for him--it put out a great claw and caught
him by the leg, and as it moved it rattled like a great bunch of keys,
or like the sheet iron they make thunder out of in pantomimes.
"No you don't," said the dragon in a spluttering voice, like a damp
squib.
"Deary, deary me," said poor John, trembling more than ever in the claw
of the dragon. "Here's a nice end for a respectable blacksmith!"
The dragon seemed very much struck by this remark.
"Do you mind saying that again?" said he, quite politely.
So John said again, very distinctly:
"_Here_--_is_--_a_--_nice_--_end_--_for_--_a_--_respectable_--_blacksmith._"
"I didn't know," said the dragon. "Fancy now! You're the very man I
wanted."
"So I understood you to say before," said John, his teeth chattering.
"Oh, I don't mean what you mean," said the dragon, "but I should like