The Book of Dragons
Early, early, early, while all the townspeople were fast asleep, she ran
up the turret-steps and looked out over the field, and at the other side
of the field there was a green, ferny ditch and a rose-thorny hedge, and
then came the wood. And as Sabrinetta stood on her tower she saw a
shaking and a twisting of the rose-thorny hedge, and then something very
bright and shining wriggled out through it into the ferny ditch and back
again. It only came out for a minute, but she saw it quite plainly, and
she said to herself: "Dear me, what a curious, shiny, bright-looking
creature! If it were bigger, and if I didn't know that there have been
no fabulous monsters for quite a long time now, I should almost think it
was a dragon."
The thing, whatever it was, did look rather like a dragon--but then it
was too small; and it looked rather like a lizard--only then it was too
big. It was about as long as a hearthrug.
"I wish it had not been in such a hurry to get back into the wood," said
Sabrinetta. "Of course, it's quite safe for me, in my dragonproof tower;
but if it is a dragon, it's quite big enough to eat people, and today's
the first of May, and the children go out to get flowers in the wood."
When Sabrinetta had done the housework (she did not leave so much as a
speck of dust anywhere, even in the corneriest corner of the winding
stair) she put on her milk white, silky gown with the moon-daisies
worked on it, and went up to the top of her tower again.
Across the fields troops of children were going out to gather the may,
and the sound of their laughter and singing came up to the top of the
tower.
"I do hope it wasn't a dragon," said Sabrinetta.
The children went by twos and by threes and by tens and by twenties, and
the red and blue and yellow and white of their frocks were scattered on
the green of the field.
"It's like a green silk mantle worked with flowers," said the Princess,
smiling.
Then by twos and by threes, by tens and by twenties, the children
vanished into the wood, till the mantle of the field was left plain
green once more.
"All the embroidery is unpicked," said the Princess, sighing.
The sun shone, and the sky was blue, and the fields were quite green,
and all the flowers were very bright indeed, because it was May Day.
Then quite suddenly a cloud passed over the sun, and the silence was
broken by shrieks from far off; and, like a many-colored torrent, all
the children burst from the wood and rushed, a red and blue and yellow
and white wave, across the field, screaming as they ran. Their voices
came up to the Princess on her tower, and she heard the words threaded
on their screams like beads on sharp needles: "The dragon, the dragon,
the dragon! Open the gates! The dragon is coming! The fiery dragon!"
And they swept across the field and into the gate of the town, and the
Princess heard the gate bang, and the children were out of sight--but on
the other side of the field the rose-thorns crackled and smashed in the
hedge, and something very large and glaring and horrible trampled the
ferns in the ditch for one moment before it hid itself again in the
covert of the wood.
The Princess went down and told her nurse, and the nurse at once locked
the great door of the tower and put the key in her pocket.
"Let them take care of themselves," she said, when the Princess begged
to be allowed to go out and help to take care of the children. "My
business is to take care of you, my precious, and I'm going to do it.
Old as I am, I can turn a key still."
So Sabrinetta went up again to the top of her tower, and cried whenever
she thought of the children and the fiery dragon. For she knew, of
course, that the gates of the town were not dragonproof, and that the
dragon could just walk in whenever he liked.
The children ran straight to the palace, where the Prince was cracking
his hunting whip down at the kennels, and told him what had happened.
"Good sport," said the Prince, and he ordered out his pack of
hippopotamuses at once. It was his custom to hunt big game with
hippopotamuses, and people would not have minded that so much--but he
would swagger about in the streets of the town with his pack yelping and
gamboling at his heels, and when he did that, the green-grocer, who had
his stall in the marketplace, always regretted it; and the crockery
merchant, who spread his wares on the pavement, was ruined for life
every time the Prince chose to show off his pack.
The Prince rode out of the town with his hippopotamuses trotting and
frisking behind him, and people got inside their houses as quickly as
they could when they heard the voices of his pack and the blowing of his
horn. The pack squeezed through the town gates and off across country to
hunt the dragon. Few of you who had not seen a pack of hippopotamuses in
full cry will be able to imagine at all what the hunt was like. To begin
with, hippopotamuses do not bay like hounds: They grunt like pigs, and
their grunt is very big and fierce. Then, of course, no one expects
hippopotamuses to jump. They just crash through the hedges and lumber
through the standing corn, doing serious injury to the crops, and
annoying the farmers very much. All the hippopotamuses had collars with
their name and address on, but when the farmers called at the palace to
complain of the injury to their standing crops, the Prince always said
it served them right for leaving their crops standing about in people's
way, and he never paid anything at all.
So now, when he and his pack went out, several people in the town
whispered, "I wish the dragon would eat him"--which was very wrong of
them, no doubt, but then he was such a very nasty Prince.
They hunted by field, and they hunted by wold; they drew the woods
blank, and the scent didn't lie on the downs at all. The dragon was shy,
and would not show himself.
But just as the Prince was beginning to think there was no dragon at
all, but only a cock and bull, his favourite old hippopotamus gave
tongue. The Prince blew his horn and shouted: "Tally ho! Hark forward!
Tantivy!" and the whole pack charged downhill toward the hollow by the
wood. For there, plain to be seen, was the dragon, as big as a barge,
glowing like a furnace, and spitting fire and showing his shining teeth.
"The hunt is up!" cried the Prince. And indeed it was. For the
dragon--instead of behaving as a quarry should, and running away--ran
straight at the pack, and the Prince, on his elephant, had the
mortification of seeing his prize pack swallowed up one by one in the
twinkling of an eye, by the dragon they had come out to hunt. The dragon
swallowed all the hippopotamuses just as a dog swallows bits of meat. It
was a shocking sight. Of the whole of the pack that had come out
sporting so merrily to the music of the horn, now not even a
puppy-hippopotamus was left, and the dragon was looking anxiously around
to see if he had forgotten anything.
The Prince slipped off his elephant on the other side and ran into the
thickest part of the wood. He hoped the dragon could not break through
the bushes there, since they were very strong and close. He went
crawling on hands and knees in a most un-Prince-like way, and at last,
finding a hollow tree, he crept into it. The wood was very still--no
crashing of branches and no smell of burning came to alarm the Prince.
He drained the silver hunting bottle slung from his shoulder, and
stretched his legs in the hollow tree. He never shed a single tear for
his poor tame hippopotamuses who had eaten from his hand and followed
him faithfully in all the pleasures of the chase for so many years. For
he was a false Prince, with a skin like leather and hair like hearth
brushes and a heart like a stone. He never shed a tear, but he just went
to sleep.
When he awoke it was dark. He crept out of the tree and rubbed his eyes.
The wood was black about him, but there was a red glow in a dell close
by. It was a fire of sticks, and beside it sat a ragged youth with long,
yellow hair; all around lay sleeping forms which breathed heavily.
"Who are you?" said the Prince.
"I'm Elfin, the pig keeper," said the ragged youth. "And who are you?"
"I'm Tiresome, the Prince," said the other.
"And what are you doing out of your palace at this time of night?" asked
the pig keeper, severely.
"I've been hunting," said the Prince.
The pig keeper laughed. "Oh, it was you I saw, then? A good hunt, wasn't
it? My pigs and I were looking on."
All the sleeping forms grunted and snored, and the Prince saw that they
were pigs: He knew it by their manners.
"If you had known as much as I do," Elfin went on, "you might have saved
your pack."
"What do you mean?" said Tiresome.
"Why, the dragon," said Elfin. "You went out at the wrong time of day.
The dragon should be hunted at night."
"No, thank you," said the Prince, with a shudder. "A daylight hunt is
quite good enough for me, you silly pig keeper."
"Oh, well," said Elfin, "do as you like about it--the dragon will come
and hunt you tomorrow, as likely as not. I don't care if he does, you
silly Prince."
"You're very rude," said Tiresome.
"Oh, no, only truthful," said Elfin.
"Well, tell me the truth, then. What is it that, if I had known as much
as you do about, I shouldn't have lost my hippopotamuses?"
"You don't speak very good English," said Elfin. "But come, what will
you give me if I tell you?"
"If you tell me what?" said the tiresome Prince.
"What you want to know."
"I don't want to know anything," said Prince Tiresome.
"Then you're more of a silly even than I thought," said Elfin. "Don't
you want to know how to settle the dragon before he settles you?"
"It might be as well," the Prince admitted.
"Well, I haven't much patience at any time," said Elfin, "and now I can
assure you that there's very little left. What will you give me if I
tell you?"
"Half my kingdom," said the Prince, "and my cousin's hand in marriage."
"Done," said the pig keeper. "Here goes! The dragon grows small at
night! He sleeps under the root of this tree. I use him to light my fire
with."
And, sure enough, there under the tree was the dragon on a nest of
scorched moss, and he was about as long as your finger.
"How can I kill him?" asked the Prince.
"I don't know that you can kill him," said Elfin, "but you can take him
away if you've brought anything to put him in. That bottle of yours
would do."
So between them they managed, with bits of stick and by singeing their
fingers a little, to poke and shove the dragon till they made it creep
into the silver hunting bottle, and then the Prince screwed on the top
tight.
"Now we've got him," said Elfin. "Let's take him home and put Solomon's
seal on the mouth of the bottle, and then he'll be safe enough. Come
along--we'll divide up the kingdom tomorrow, and then I shall have some
money to buy fine clothes to go courting in."
But when the wicked Prince made promises he did not make them to keep.
"Go on with you! What do you mean?" he said. "I found the dragon and
I've imprisoned him. I never said a word about courtings or kingdoms. If
you say I did, I shall cut your head off at once." And he drew his
sword.
"All right," said Elfin, shrugging his shoulders. "I'm better off than
you are, anyhow."
"What do you mean?" spluttered the Prince.
"Why, you've only got a kingdom (and a dragon), but I've got clean hands
(and five and seventy fine black pigs)."
So Elfin sat down again by his fire, and the Prince went home and told
his Parliament how clever and brave he had been, and though he woke them
up on purpose to tell them, they were not angry, but said: "You are
indeed brave and clever." For they knew what happened to people with
whom the Prince was not pleased.