The Book of Dragons (12 page)

And still Nigel held on and the dragon after him.

The Princess could see nothing for the steam, and she
stood crying bitterly, but still holding on tight with her right hand to the other end of the cord which Nigel had told her to hold; while with her left she held the ship’s chronometer, and looked at it through her tears as he had bidden her look, so as to know when to pull the rope.

On went Nigel over the sand, and on went the dragon after him. And the tide was low, and sleepy little waves lapped the sand’s edge.

Now at the lip of the water Nigel paused and looked back, and the 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. And Nigel, seeing this, ran shoreward for his life—and the tide began to flow in, and the time of the whirlpool’s 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 round 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. And 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.

Then when the griffin fell asleep that afternoon at tea-time, 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 round to look for the lion, and 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.”

And 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 directly now 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 with 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 any more. 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. And that was the first drop of the wicked King’s blood. And 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 ploughed. 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 ploughed 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 round 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.

Little children play round him and over him

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 which a great many people would like to be able to do.

T
here 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 that of course the townspeople, whenever they wanted a horse shod or a shaft mended, went to the mayor. And 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, and his odds and ends, and his fagots, and his twopenn’orths 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 up 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 light-hearted, 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 button-hole. 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 twopenn’orth 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
anything 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 you to do a job for me. One of my wings has got some of the rivets out of it just above the joint. Could you put that to rights?”