The last dragon
gently, and slid off the cart. Wheeee! Down the hill shot Peter,
clutched tightly to the blue box, and on climbed the little white
donkey toward Giggletown, the disgusted expression not so pronounced
now because the cart was much lighter. Mig continued to snore and his
head continued to bob.
That was a breathless ride for Peter, almost as breathless as the
ride on the dragon. He closed his eyes tight and trusted to luck,
because there was nothing else to do, now that the box was really on
its way. Wheeee!--the box seemed to fly through the air,--down, down,
down. Surely he’d have to stop sooner or later because the whole
world wasn’t down hill, or else he’d hit something and stop that way.
Zummmm--Zummmm--Zummmm!--The air sang in his ears. He opened his eyes
and shut them again. Nothing but blackness as if he were plunging down
a long black hole, just like Alice down the rabbit’s hole, thought
Peter.
And then--Bang! Crash! Smash! Peter was thrown off the box and landed
in the middle of a haystack. He was dazed for a moment but not hurt,
and quickly he got up and ran to the box which was standing up on end
and not broken open as he had thought it might be. No, it had been
tightly locked.
Peter listened with his ear pressed against the box. There was no
sound. Peter called, “Princess! Princess!” There was no answer. Maybe
the bump had hurt her? Maybe it had broken her poor cracking heart.
“Princess! Princess!” he called again, much louder. Still no answer.
Peter looked about, helplessly. He was in a little valley with trees
all around, and a little brook running through, and golden haystacks
in corners and by fences. In back stretched the road, going up and
up toward Giggletown. The sun was just rising. Peter was puzzled. He
didn’t know just what to do next.
And then a rapping came from the box, once more, and the little voice
called, “Let me out! Let me out! Oh, _please_ let me out!”
“Yes, yes, Princess, I will!” cried Peter. “Just a minute.”
Well, if he didn’t have his sword all this time! He had held it in his
hand all the way down the hill, and now he took it out of its sheath
and looked at it. It was a very strong sword and very sharp.
Peter fitted the sharp point into the gold lock; gave it a twist like
a key, and click went the lock and back it sprang. The lid of the box
leaped open with a weird, long-drawn cry and out something sprang like
a spring from a clock,--something long and red, covered with glistening
scales. Peter fell back, his hands before his eyes.
When he looked again, there, seated on top of a haystack, his eyes big
with surprise, was a red dragon, redder than a salmon, redder than a
red-breast, redder than the reddest rose. A red, red dragon but so
shrunken in size, just like a red suit of clothes that’s been left out
in the rain all night.
CHAPTER XVI
DALLAHAN
“Oh--oh”--cried Peter in surprise, “you’re--you’re not the Princess
are--are you?”
“No,” said the red dragon in a shrunken voice, “I’m--I’m just Dallahan.”
Peter clutched his sword to defend himself. “But--but how _little_ you
are--not a bit like a real dwagon,” he said.
“I--I _am_ little now,” Dallahan whimpered. “That wretched old Mig
did it. He cramped me into that box and made me feel so small that
it’s taken all the gumption out of me. Please put up your sword, I’m
perfectly harmless now.”
Peter instantly felt sorry for Dallahan. He let his sword drop to his
side and came nearer to the poor red fellow.
“I’m very sorry,” Peter said. “You see, I thought you were very
fierce.”
“I _was_ before that horrible magician made me feel so small.”
“That’s rather the way _my_ dwagon felt when I first found him,” Peter
started to explain.
Dallahan interrupted. “_Your_ dragon? Who’s _your_ dragon?” he asked,
frowning.
“The cave dwagon I think they call him, around these parts.”
“Oh, that one,” said Dallahan, shaking his head.
“Do you know him?” Peter asked.
“Do I _know_ him? I stole the princess away from him, didn’t I?” He
looked pathetic. “And he used to be such a good friend of mine, when we
were boys, before I moved to Ireland. I shouldn’t have played such a
mean trick on an old, boyhood friend, should I now?” His brogue became
quivery.
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Peter agreed, solemnly.
“Well, I’ve paid for my meanness,” Dallahan sighed, looking down at his
shrunken self with self-pity. “And now I’m ready to make amends. We
must find that wretched little Mig, rescue the princess, and return
her to the cave dragon who loves her with all his heart.”
Peter’s head was in a whirl, just as yours must be when you read this,
because it is all so topsy-turvey. “But the cave dragon’s gone to
Ireland to find you and make you return the princess,” he tried to
explain.
“Has he now?” said Dallahan, with a brief return of his old spirit and
he stretched almost two feet. “Well, a lot of good that would have
done him if I’d been in my old form. One blow and”--but here he felt
small again and the two feet he had added to himself quickly vanished.
“So he’s gone to Ireland, has he? That’s too bad. All that trip for
nothing.”
Peter looked up the road that climbed the hill toward Giggletown. The
sun was up and some big black crows came down to look at the blue box,
always curious, you know. Peter asked, worried, “What’s to be done
next?”
“We must find Mig,” said Dallahan, “that’s the first step. Can you run
fast?”
“Not so very fast,” Peter replied, doubtfully.
Dallahan spoke thoughtfully. “I’d ride you on my back, only I feel
so small and crushed, at this moment, I wouldn’t have the strength to
carry you, but maybe as we run along I’ll get more confidence and that
will take out some of the kinks.”
“Will we have to run up that hill?” Peter asked, pointing up the road.
“Yes, it’s the only way to Giggletown, but run up backwards, like this.
Then it will seem as if you’re running down and it won’t be half as
hard.” And Dallahan started up tail first. Peter drew in a deep breath
and started up backwards after him.
CHAPTER XVII
ONCE MORE ON THE KING’S GREAT HIGHWAY
It was strange, but Peter _did_ find it very easy to climb, walking
backwards. He didn’t get out of breath and it seemed as though
somebody was boosting him up, as his mother used to boost him up above
the hollyhock fence when he was a much smaller boy. And looking at
Dallahan, it struck Peter that the red dragon did not seem to touch the
hill with his feet, just floated up backwards without a speck of effort.
They must have gone very fast because it wasn’t long before they had
reached the top of the high hill-road, and turning around, they stood
looking down on what must have been Giggletown, a village of red roofs,
nestling like a smile in the valley below. Dallahan pointed to some
wagon tracks in the dust of the down-hill road. “Those are the tracks
of Mig’s donkey cart,” he said. “Quick! Let’s follow them, before the
tricky old fellow gets away from us.”
But the tricky old fellow had gotten away already. Peter and Dallahan
searched the little hamlet of Giggletown from top to bottom and from
bottom to top and then straight over again, finding not a trace of
Mig, or the blue box, or the little white donkey with the disgusted
expression. They had melted away like magic butter, and no one in the
town had even caught a glimpse of them, and the people at the little
fair that was going on so merrily in the shadow of a gray-green church
said they had paid no golden ducats to see a princess with toes of
silver.
“Well, this is very discouraging,” said Dallahan, at last, sitting down
to rest on a stone by the road, “but of course it’s not surprising. Mig
is very clever, very clever indeed. He can change himself into a great
many things--shrubs and trees and stones--”
“Can he change the princess and the donkey and the cart and the sacks
of gold into other things too?” Peter asked.
“Yes, they can all change together,” returned the red dragon, rubbing
his sharp chin.
“Golly, this sounds hopeless,” thought Peter, looking up and down the
broad road, and then he said aloud, “What road is this we’re on now?”
“It’s the King’s Great Highway,” Dallahan said.
“The King’s Great Highway? Why, that’s where I fell off,” exclaimed
Peter. “Maybe--maybe if we wait right here, the dwagon will come by
looking for me.”
“If he goes to Ireland he won’t pass back along this way for days and
days,” sighed Dallahan, slumping all up on the stone. My, he looked
small, more like a crawfish, boiled red, than a dragon.
And then, far, far off on the white road a tiny speck appeared, first
no larger than a fly, and then growing to the size of a bumblebee, and
then to the size of a mouse, and then to the size of a rat, and then
to the size of a puppy, and then to the size of a dog, and then to the
size of a pig, and then to the size of a colt and then to the size of
a horse, and then--and then to the size of a dragon!
Peter gave a shout. “Oh, look--Oh, look, it’s the dwagon--the dwagon!”
He cried, and ran up the road, and just then Dallahan gave a snort and
jumped up from the stone on which he was sitting. Every red scale was
on end, for would you believe it, the stone on which Dallahan had been
sitting had moved ever so slightly--“It moved, I’m sure!” cried the
dragon, looking at the fat stone. “I’m sure it moved, although it’s not
moving this minute.”
But Peter did not hear him. He was too busily engaged otherwise. The
cave dragon had stopped and off jumped Grandma, still in her armor, and
off jumped Johnathan and Janet Jane and Nap and Jerry, and off jumped
Crubby from his perch behind the dragon’s ear. All of them tried to
embrace Peter at once and such a bumping of armor you never heard, and
since Peter wore nothing but Riggy’s torn doublet and hose, he was
severely pinched by the steel arms that gripped him.
“Oh, Peter, where have you been?” said Grandma, “and why did you fall
off?”
“I tripped,” Peter said, simply.
“Where’s your armor?” asked Johnathan.
“We were so frightened,” whimpered Janet Jane, hugging Peter tightly.
Everybody was talking at once and Peter was trying to answer all their
questions at once, too, when suddenly the dragons were heard exchanging
words together.
“Well,” said the cave dragon, “it’s certainly a surprise to find you
here, Dallahan.”
“Yes,” returned Dallahan, looking so small beside the other.
“And how you’ve changed,” said the cave dragon with sympathy.
Dallahan hung his head. “Yes, I have,” he admitted. “Don’t make fun of
me, please. I can’t help it. I’ve been locked up in a box for a long,
long time and if that wouldn’t make _anybody_ feel small I don’t know
what would.”
“Oh, you poor, poor fellow,” said the cave dragon. “Let me shake your
hand, my poor friend. I know just how you feel, because I’ve been up
in the future where I was the last dragon in the whole, whole world and
I tell you I felt mighty small and out of place myself. Yes, indeed I
did! But you mustn’t let it keep you that way always--Now, you’re out
of the box, aren’t you?”
“Yes, thanks to him,” said Dallahan, pointing to Peter.
The cave dragon smiled, tenderly. “_I_ can thank him too,” he said. “He
did practically the same thing for me, way, way ahead. But to get back
to you--you’re out of the box and--and--Well, look at yourself--you’re
growing already!”
It was true--the red dragon was stretching and stretching like an
elastic band before their eyes. He stretched from the waist-line down
and from the waist-line up, stretched his long spine, slowly, slowly,
and with this stretching of his spine his smile stretched too. “I’m
myself again!” he cried. “I’m myself again! Oh, how happy I am! How
happy I am! I want to do fine, big things! I’ve learned my lesson in