THE DREADFUL DRAGONOFHAY HILL
IN the faint early dawn of a day in the midst of a golden summer, a column of smoke was seen rising from Hay Hill, rising thickly, not without sparks in it. Danger to the lives of the dressmakers in Dover Street was not apprehended. The fire-brigade was not called out. The fire-brigade had not been called into existence. Dover Street had not yet been built. I tell of a time that was thirty-nine thousand years before the birth of Christ.
To imagine Hay Hill as it then was, you must forget much of what, as you approach it from Berkeley Square or from Piccadilly, it is now. You knew it in better days, as I did?—days when its seemly old Georgian charm had not vanished under the superimposition of two vast high barracks forthe wealthier sort of bachelors to live in? You remember how, in frosty weather, the horse of your hansom used to skate hopelessly down the slope of it and collapse, pitching you out, at the foot of it? Such memories will not serve. They are far too recent. You must imagine just a green hill with some trees and bushes on it. You must imagine it far higher than it is nowadays, tapering to a summit not yet planed off for the purpose of Dover Street; and steeper; and with two caves aloft in it; and bright, bright green.
And conceive that its smiling wildness made no contrast with aught that was around. Berkeley Square smiled wildly too. Berkeley Square had no squareness. It was but a green valley that went, uninterrupted by any Piccadilly, into the Green Park. And through the midst of it a clear stream went babbling and meandering, making all manner of queer twists and turns on its off-hand way to the marshlands of Pimlico down yonder. Modern engineers have driven this stream ignominiously underground; but at that time there it still was, visible, playful, fringed with reeds, darted about in by smallfishes, licensed to reflect sky. And it had tributaries! The landscape that I speak of, the great rolling landscape that comprised all Mayfair, was everywhere intersected by tiny brooks, whose waters, for what they were worth, sooner or later trickled brightly into that main stream. Here and there, quite fortuitously, in groups or singly, stood willows and silver birches, full of that wistful grace which we regard as peculiarly modern. But not till the landscape reached Hyde Park did trees exert a strong influence over it. Then they exerted a very strong influence indeed. They hemmed the whole thing in. Hyde Park, which was a dense and immemorial forest, did not pause where the Marble Arch is, but swept on to envelop all Paddington and Marylebone and most of Bloomsbury, and then, skirting Soho, over-ran everything from Covent Garden to Fetter Lane, and in a rush southward was brought up sharp only by the edge of the sheer cliffs that banked this part of the Thames.
The Thames, wherever it was not thus sharply opposed, was as tyrannous as the very forest. It knew no mercy for thelowly. Westminster, like Pimlico, was a mere swamp, miasmal, malarial, frequented by frogs only, whose croaks, no other sound intervening, made hideous to the ear a district now nobly and forever resonant with the silver voices of choristers and the golden voices of senators. Westminster is firm underfoot nowadays; yet, even so, as you come away from it up the Duke of York’s steps, you feel that you are mounting into a drier, brisker air; and this sensation is powerfully repeated when anon you climb St. James’s Street. Not lower, you feel, not lower than Piccadilly would you have your home. And this, it would seem, was just what the average man felt forty-one thousand years ago. Nature had placed in the steep chalky slopes from the marshes a fair number of commodious caves; but these were almost always vacant. Only on the higher levels did human creatures abound.
And scant enough, by our present standards, that abundance was. In all the space which the forest had left free—not merely all Mayfair, remember: all Soho, too, and all that lies between them—thepopulation was hardly more than three hundred souls. So low a figure is hard to grasp. So few people, in a place so teeming now, are almost beneath our notice. Almost, but not quite. What there was of them was not bad.
Nature, as a Roman truly said, does not work by leaps. What we call Evolution is a quite exasperatingly slow process. We should like to compare favourably with even the latest of our predecessors. We wince whenever we read a declaration by some eminent biologist that the skull of the prehistoric man whose bones have just been unearthed in this or that district differs but slightly from the skull of the average man in the twentieth century. I hate having to tell you that the persons in this narrative had well-shaped heads, and that if their jaws were more prominent, their teeth sharper, their backs less upright, their arms longer and hairier, and their feet suppler than our own, the difference in each case was so faint as to be almost negligible.
Of course they were a simpler folk than we are. They knew far less than we know.They did not, for example, know they were living thirty-nine thousand years before Christ; and ‘protopalaeolithic’ was a term theyneverused. They regarded themselves as very modern and very greatly enlightened. They marvelled at their ingenuities in the use of flint and stone. They held that their ancestors had been crude in thought and in mode of life, but not unblest with a certain vigour and nobility of character which they themselves lacked. They thought that their descendants would be a rather feeble, peevish race, yet that somehow in the far future, a state of general goodness and felicity would set in, to abide forever. But I seem to be failing in my effort to stress the difference between these people and ourselves. Let us hold fast to the pleasing fact that they really were less well-educated.
They could neither read nor write, and were so weak in their arithmetic that not a shepherd among them could count his sheep correctly, nor a goat-herd his goats. And their pitiful geography! Glancing northward above their forest, they saw the mountainous gaunt region that is Hampstead,that is Highgate; southward, across the river and its wide fens, the ridges of a nameless Surrey; but as to how the land lay beyond those barriers they had only the haziest notion. That there was land they knew. For, though they themselves never ventured further than the edge of the marshes, or than the fringe of the tangled forest that bounded the rest of their domain, certain other people were more venturesome: often enough it would happen that some stranger, some dark-haired and dark-eyed nomad, passed this way, blinking from the forest or soaked from the river; and glad always was such an one to rest awhile here, and tell to his good hosts tales of the outlying world. Tales very marvellous to the dwellers in this sleek safe homeland!—tales of rugged places where no men are, or few, and these in peril by night and by day; tales of the lion, a creature with yellow eyes and a great mop of yellow hair to his head, a swift and strong creature, without pity; and of the tusked mastodon, taller than the oldest oak, and shaking the ground he walks on; and of the winged dragon, that huge beast, poising so high inthe air that he looks no bigger than a hawk, yet reaching his prey on earth as instantly as a hawk his; and of the huge crawling dragon, that breathes fire through his nostrils and scorches black the grass as he goes hunting, hunting; of the elephant, who fears nothing but mastodons and dragons; of the hyena and the tiger, and of beasts beside whom these seem not dreadful.
Wide-eyed, open-mouthed, the homelanders would sit listening. ‘O wanderer,’ would say one, ‘tell us more of the mastodon, that is taller than the oldest oak.’ And another would say, ‘Make again for us, O wanderer, the noise that a lion makes.’ And another, ‘Tell us more of the dragon that scorches black the grass as he goes hunting, hunting.’ And another, ‘O you that have so much wandered, surely you will abide here always? Here is not hardship nor danger. We go not in fear of the beasts whose roast flesh you have tasted and have praised. Rather go they in great fear of us. The savoury deer flees from us, and has swifter feet than we have, yet escapes not the point of the thrown spear,and falls, and is ours. The hare is not often luckier, such is our skill. Our goats and our sheep would flee from us, but dare not, fearing the teeth of certain dogs who love us. We slay what we will for food. For us all there is plenty in all seasons. You have drunk of the water of our stream. Is it not fresh and cold? Have you cracked in your wanderings better nuts than ours? or bitten juicier apples? Surely you will abide here always.’
And to the wanderer it would seem no bad thing that he should do so. Yet he did not so. When the sun had sunk and risen a few times he would stretch his arms, maybe gazing round at the landscape with a rather sardonic smile, and be gone through the forest or across the water. And the homelanders, nettled, would shrug their shoulders, and thank their gods for having rid them of a fool.
Their gods were many, including the sun and moon, their clear stream, apple-trees and cherry-trees and fig-trees and trees that gave nuts, rose-bushes in summer, rain, and also fire—fire, the god that themselves had learnt to make from flint, firethat made meat itself godlike. But they prayed to no god, not being aware that they needed anything. And they had no priesthood. When a youth lost his heart to a maid he approached her, and laid his hands gently upon her shoulders, and then, if she did not turn away from him, he put his hands about her waist and lifted her three times from the ground. This sufficed: they were now man and wife, and lived happily, or not so, ever after. Nor was it needful that the rite should be only thus. If a maid lost her heart to a youth, the laid hands could be hers, and the shoulders his, and if he turned not away from her, if thrice he lifted her from the ground, this too was wedlock.
If there were no good cave for them to take as their own, bride and bridegroom built them a hut of clay and wattles. Such huts were already numerous, dotted about in all directions. Elder folk thought them very ugly, and said that they spoilt the landscape. Yet what was to be done? It is well that a people should multiply. Though these homelanders now deemed themselves very many indeed (their number,you see, being so much higher than they ever could count up to, even incorrectly), yet not even the eldest of them denied that there was plenty of room and plenty of food for more. And plenty of employment, you ask? They did not worry about that. The more babies there were, the more children and grown folk would there be anon to take turns in minding the ample flocks and herds, and the more leisure for all to walk or sit around, talking about the weather or about one another. They made no fetish of employment.
I have said that they were not bad. Had you heard them talked about by one another, you might rather doubt this estimate. You would have heard little good of any one. No family seemed to approve of its neighbours. Even between brothers and sisters mutual trust was rare. Even husbands and wives bickered. To strangers, as you have seen, these people could be charming. I do not say they were ever violent among themselves. That was not their way. But they lacked kindness.
Happiness is said to beget kindness. Were these people not happy? They deemedthemselves so. Nay, there was to come a time when, looking back, they felt that they had been marvellously happy. This time began on the day in whose dawn smoke was seen rising from Hay Hill.
The title of my tale has enabled you to guess the source of that smoke: the nostrils of some dreadful dragon. But had you been the little girl named Thia, by whom first that smoke was seen, you would not have come upon the truth so quickly.
Thia had slept out under the stars, and, waking as they faded, had risen, brushed the dew from her arms and legs, shaken it off her little goatskin tunic, and gone with no glance around or upward to look for mushrooms. Presently, as there seemed to be no mushrooms this morning anywhere, she let her eyes rove from the ground (ground that is now Lord Lansdowne’s courtyard) and, looking up, saw the thicksmoke above the hill. She saw that it came from the cave where dwelt the widow Gra with her four children. How could Gra, how could any one, want a fire just now? Thia’s dark eyes filled with wonder. On wintry nights it was proper that there should be a fire at the mouth of every cave, proper that in wintry dawns these should still be smouldering. But—such smoke as this on such a morning! Heavier, thicker smoke than Thia had ever seen in all the ten years of her existence! Of course fire was a god. But surely he would not have us worship him to-day? Why then had Gra lit him? Thia gave it up, and moved away with eyes downcast in renewed hope of mushrooms.
She had not gone far before she stared back again, hearing a piteous shrill scream from the hill. She saw a little boy flying headlong down the slope—Thol, the little red-haired boy who lived in the other cave up there. Thol slipped, tumbled head over heels, rolled, picked himself up, saw Thia, and rushed weeping towards her.
‘What ails you, O child?’ asked Thia,than whom Thol was indeed a year younger and much smaller.
‘O!’ was all that the child vouchsafed between his sobs, ‘O!’
Thia thought ill of tears. Scorn for Thol fought the maternal instinct in her. But scorn had the worst of it. She put her arms about Thol. Quaveringly he told her what he had just seen, and what he believed it to be, and how it lay there asleep, with just its head and tail outside Gra’s cave, snoring. Then he broke down utterly. Thia looked at the hill. Maternal instinct was now worsted by wonder and curiosity and the desire to be very brave—to show how much braver than boys girls are. Thia went to the hill, shaking off Thol’s wild clutches and leaving him behind. Thia went up the hill quickly but warily, on tiptoe, wide-eyed, with her tongue out upon her underlip. She took a sidelong course, and she noticed a sort of black path through the grass, winding from the mouth of Gra’s cave, down one side of the hill, and away, away till it was lost in the white mists over the marshes. She climbed nearly level with the cave’s mouth, and then, peering througha bush which hid her, saw what lay behind the veil of smoke.
Much worse the sleeping thing was than she had feared it would be, much huger and more hideous. Its face was as long as a man’s body, and lay flat out along the ground. Had Thia ever seen a crocodile’s face, that is of what she would have been reminded—a crocodile, but with great pricked-up ears, and snuffling forth fiery murk in deep, rhythmic, luxurious exhalations. The tip of the creature’s tail, sticking out from the further side of the cave’s mouth, looked to her very like an arrow-head of flint—green flint! She could awfully imagine the rest of the beast, curled around in the wide deep cave. And she shuddered with a great hatred, and tears started to her eyes, as she thought of Gra and of those others.
When she reached the valley, it was clear to Thol that she had been crying. And she, resenting his scrutiny, made haste to say, ‘I wept for Gra and for her children; but you, O child, because you are a coward.’
At these words the boy made withinhim a great resolve. This was, that he would slay the dragon.
How? He had not thought of that. When? Not to-day, he felt, nor to-morrow. But some day, somehow. He knew himself to be small, even for his age, and the dragon big for whatever its age might be. He knew he was not very clever; he was sure the dragon was very clever indeed. So he said nothing to Thia of his great resolve that she should be sorry.
Meanwhile, the sun had risen over the hills beyond the water, and the birds been interrupted in their songs by the bleating of penned sheep. This sound recalled Thol from his dreams of future glory.
For he was a shepherd’s lad. It was the custom that children, as they ceased to toddle, should begin to join in whatever work their parents were by way of doing for the common good. Indeed it was felt that work was especially a thing for theyoung. Thol had no parents to help; for his mother had died in giving him birth; and one day, when he was but seven years old, his father, who was a shepherd, had been attacked and killed by an angry ram. In the sleek safe homeland this death by violence had made a very painful impression. There was a general desire to hush it up, to forget it. Thol was a reminder of it. Thol was ignored, as much as possible. He was allowed to have the cave that had been his father’s, but even the widow Gra, in the cave so near to his, disregarded him, and forbade her children to play with him. However, there dwelt hard by in the valley a certain shepherd, named Brud, and he, being childless, saw use for Thol as helping-boy, and to that use put him. Every morning, it was Thol’s first duty to wake his master. It was easy for Thol himself to wake early, for his cave faced eastwards. To-day in his great excitement about the dragon he had forgotten his duty to Brud. He went running now to perform it.
Brud and his dog, awakened, came out and listened to Thol’s tale. Truthfulnesswas regarded by all the homelanders as a very important thing, especially for the young. Brud took his staff, and ‘Now, O Thol,’ he said, ‘will I beat you for saying the thing that is not.’ But the boy protested that there was indeed a dragon in Gra’s cave; so Brud said sagely, ‘Choose then one of two things: either to run hence into Gra’s cave, or to be beaten.’ Thol so unhesitatingly chose to be beaten that it was clear he did believe his own story. Thia, moreover, came running up to say that there truly was a dragon. So Brud did not beat Thol very much, and went away with his dog towards the hill, curious to know what really was amiss up there.
Perhaps Thia was already sorry she had called Thol a coward, for, though he was now crying again loudly, she did but try to comfort him. His response to her effort was not worthy of a future hero: he complained through his tears that she had not been beaten, too, for saying there was a dragon. Thia’s eyes flashed fiercely. She told Thol he was ugly and puny and freckle-faced, and that nobody loved him. Allthis was true, and it came with the more crushing force from pretty Thia, whom every one petted.
No one ever made Thia work, though she was strong and agile, and did wondrously well whatever task she might do for the fun of it. She could milk a goat, or light a fire, or drive a flock of geese, or find mushrooms if there were any, as quickly and surely as though she had practised hard for years. But the homelanders preferred to see her go flitting freely all the day long, dancing and carolling, with flowers in her hair.
Thia’s hair was as dark as her eyes. Thia was no daughter of the homeland. She was the daughter of two wanderers who, seven years ago, had sojourned here for a few days. Their child had then attained just that age which was always a crisis in the lives of wanderers’ children: she had grown enough to be heavy in her parents’ arms, and not enough to foot it beside them. So they had left her here, promising the homelanders that in time they would come back for her; and she, who had had no home, had one now. Although (a relic,this, of primitive days) no homelander ever on any account went near to the mouth of another’s dwelling, Thia would go near and go in, and be always welcome. The homelanders seldom praised one another’s children; but about Thia there was no cause for jealousy: they all praised her strange beauty, her fearless and bright ways. And withal she was very good. You must not blame her for lack of filial sense. How should she love parents whom she did not remember? She was full of love for the homelanders; and naturally she hated the thought they hated: that some day two wanderers might come and whisk her away.[A]She loved this people and this place the more deeply perhaps because she was not of them. Forget the harsh things she has just said to Thol. He surely was to blame. And belike she would even have begged his pardon had she not been preoccupied with thoughts for the whole homeland, with great fears of what thedreadful dragon might be going to do when he woke up.
And a wonder it was that he did not wake forthwith, so loud a bellow of terror did Brud and his dog utter at the glimpse they had of him. The glimpse sufficed them: both bounded to the foot of the hill with incredible speed, still howling. From the mouths of caves and huts people darted and stood agape. Responsive sheep, goats, geese, what not, made great noises of their own. Brud stood waving his arms wildly towards the hill. People stared from him to the column of smoke, and from it to him. They were still heavy with sleep. Unusual behaviour at any time annoyed them; they deeply resented behaviour so unusual as this so early in the morning. Little by little, disapproval merged into anxiety. Brud became the centre of a circle. But he did not radiate conviction. A dragon? A dragon in the homeland? Brud must be mad!
Brud called Thol to witness. Thol, afraid that if he told the truth he would be beaten by everybody but Brud, said nothing. Favourite Thia was not so reticent. She described clearly the dragon’s head and tail and the black path through the grass. Something like panic passed around the circle; not actual panic, for—surely Thia’s bright dark eyes had deceived her. A dragon was one thing, the homeland another: there couldn’t possibly be a dragon in the homeland. Mainly that they might set Thia’s mind at rest, a few people went to reconnoitre. Presently, with palsied lips, they were admitting that there could be, and was, a dragon in the homeland.
They ran stuttering the news in all directions, ran knowing it to be true, yet themselves hardly believing it, ran hoping others would investigate it and prove it a baseless rumour, ran gibbering it to the very confines of the homeland. Slowly, incredulously, people from all quarters made their way to the place where so many were already gathered. The whole population was at length concentrated in what is Berkeley Square. Up the sky the sun climbedsteadily. Surely, thought the homelanders, a good sign? This god of theirs could not look so calm and bright if there were really a dragon among his chosen people? Bold adventurers went scouting hopefully up the hill, only to return with horror in their eyes, and with the same old awful report upon their lips. Before noon the whole throng was convinced. Eld is notoriously irreceptive of new ideas; but even the oldest inhabitant stood convinced now.
Silence reigned, broken only by the bleatings, cacklings, quackings, of animals unreleased from their pens or coops, far and near. Up, straight up through the windless air went the column of smoke steadfastly, horribly, up higher than the eyes of the homelanders could follow it.
What was to be done? Could nothing be done? Could not some one, at any rate, say something? People who did not know each other, or had for years not been on speaking terms, found themselves eagerly conversing, in face of the common peril. Solemn parties were formed to go and view the dragon’s track, its odious scorched track from the marshes. People remembered havingbeen told by wanderers that when a dragon swam a river he held high his head, lest his flames should be quenched. The river that had been crossed last night by this monster was a great god. Why had he not drowned the monster? Well, fire was a great god also, and he deigned to dwell in dragons. One god would not destroy another. But again, would even a small god deign to dwell in a dragon? The homelanders revised their theology. Fire was not a god at all.
Then, why, asked some, had the river not done his duty? The more rigid logicians answered that neither was the river a god. But this doctrine was not well received. People felt they had gone quite far enough as it was. Besides, now was a time rather for action than for thought. Some of those who were skilled in hunting went to fetch their arrows and spears, formed a sort of army, and marched round and round the lower slopes of the hill in readiness to withstand and slay the dragon so soon as he should come down into the open. At first this had a cheering and heartening effect (on all but Thol, whose personal aspirationyou remember). But soon there recurred to the minds of many, and were repeated broadcast, other words that had been spoken by wanderers. ‘So hard,’ had said one, ‘are the scales of a crawling dragon that no spear can prick him, howsoever sharp and heavy and strongly hurled.’ And another had grimly said, ‘Young is that dragon who is not older than the oldest man.’ And another, ‘A crawling dragon is not baulked but by the swiftness of men’s heels.’
All this was most depressing. Confidence in the spearmen was badly shaken. The applause for them whenever they passed by was quieter, betokening rather pity than hope. Nay, there were people who now deprecated any attempt to kill the dragon. The dragon, they argued, must not be angered. If he were not mistreated he might do no harm. He had a right to exist. He had visited Gra’s cave in a friendly spirit, but Gra had tried to mistreat him, and the result should be a lesson to them all.
Others said, more acceptably, ‘Let us think not of the dragon. What the spearmencan do, that will they do. Let this day be as other days, and each man to the task that is his.’ Brud was one of those who hurried away gladly. Nor was Thol loth to follow. The chance that the dragon might come out in his absence did not worry a boy so unprepared to-day for single combat; and if other hands than his were to succeed in slaying the dragon, he would liefer not have the bitterness of looking on.
Thia also detached herself from the throng. Many voices of men and women and children called after her, bidding her stay. ‘I would find me some task,’ she answered.
‘O Thia,’ said one, ‘find only flowers for your hair. And sing to us, dance for us. Let this day be as other days.’ And so pleaded many voices.
But Thia answered them, ‘My heart is too sad. We are all in peril. For myself I am not afraid. But how should I dance, who love you? Not again, O dear ones, shall I dance, until the dragon be slain or gone back across the water. Neither shall I put flowers in my hair nor sing.’
She went her way, and was presently guiding a flock of geese to a pond that does not exist now.
She sat watching the geese gravely, fondly, as they swam and dived and cackled. She was filled with a sense of duty to them. They too were homelanders and dear ones. She wished that all the others could be so unknowing and so happy.
A breeze sprang up, swaying the column of smoke and driving it across the valley, on which it cast a long, wide, dark shadow.
Thia felt very old. She remembered a happy and careless child who woke—how long ago!—and went looking for mushrooms. And this memory gave her another feeling. You see, she had eaten nothing all day.
Near the pond was a cherry-tree. She looked at it. She tried not to. This was no day for eating. The sight of the red cherries jarred on her. They were so veryred. She went to the tree unwillingly. She hoped no one would see her. In your impatience at the general slowness of man’s evolution, you will be glad to learn that Thia, climbing that tree and swinging among the branches, had notably more of assurance and nimble ease than any modern child would have in like case. It was only her mind that misgave her.
Ashamed of herself, ashamed of feeling so much younger and stronger now, she dropped to the ground and wondered how she was to atone. She chose the obvious course. She ran around the homeland urging every one to eat something. All were grateful for the suggestion. The length of their fast is the measure of the shock they had received that day, and of the strain imposed on them. Eating had ever been a thing they excelled in. Most of them were far too fat. Thia’s suggestion was acted on with all speed. Great quantities of cold meat were consumed. And this was well. The night in store was to make special demands on the nerves of the homelanders.
As the sun drew near down to the west,the breeze dropped with it, and the smoke was again an upright column, reddened now by the sun. Later, while afterglow faded into twilight, to some of the homelanders it seemed that the base of the column was less steady, was moving. They were right. The time of their testing was at hand. The dragon was coming down the hill.
The spearmen opened out their ranks quickly and hovered in skirmishing order. The dragon’s pace was no quicker than that of a man strolling. His gait was at once ponderous and sinuous. The great body rocked on the four thick leglets that moved in a somehow light and stealthy fashion. They ended, these leglets, in webbed feet with talons. The long neck was craned straight forward, flush with the ground, but the tail, which was longer still, swung its barbed tip slowly from side to side, and sometimes rose, threshing the air. Neck, body and tail were surmountedby a ridge of upstanding spurs. In fact, the dragon was just what I have called him: dreadful.
Spears flew in the twilight. Ringing noises testified that many of them hit the mark. They rang as they glanced off the scales that completely sheathed the brute, who, now and again, coiled his neck round to have a look at them, as though they rather interested and amused him. One of them struck him full on the brow (if brow it can be called) without giving him an instant’s pause.
Anon, however, he halted, rearing his neck straight up, turning his head slowly this way and that, and seemed to take, between his great puffs of fiery smoke, a general survey of the valley. Twilight was not fading into darkness, for a young moon rode the sky, preserving a good view for, and of, the dragon. Most of the homelanders had with one accord retired to the further side of the valley, across the dividing stream. Only the spearmen remained on the dragon’s side, and some sheep that were in a fold there. One of the spearmen, taking aim, ventured rather near to thedragon—so near that the dragon’s neck, shooting down, all but covered the distance. The clash of the dragon’s jaws resounded. The spearman had escaped only by a hair’s breadth. The homelanders made a faint noise, something between a sigh and a groan.
The dragon looked at them for a long time. He seemed to be in no hurry. He glanced at the moon, as though saying, ‘The night is young.’ He glanced at the sheepfold and slowly went to it. Wanderers had often said of dragons that they devoured no kind of beast in any land that had human creatures in it. What would this dragon do? The huddled sheep bleated piteously at him. He reared his neck high and examined them from that altitude. Suddenly a swoop and a clash. The neck was instantly erect again, with a ripple down it. The head turned slowly towards the homelanders, then slowly away again. The mind was seemingly divided. There was a pause. This ended in another swoop, clash, recoil and ripple. Another dubious pause; and now, neck to ground, the dragon headed amain for the homelanders.
They drew back, they scattered. Some rushed they knew not whither for refuge, wailing wildly; others swarmed up the trunks of high trees (swiftlier, yes, than we could). Across the stream stepped the dragon with a sort of cumbrous daintiness, and straightway, at his full speed, which was that of a man walking quickly, gave chase. If you care for the topographical side of history, you should walk out of Berkeley Square by way of Charles Street, into Curzon Street, past Chesterfield House, up Park Lane, along Oxford Street, down South Molton Street and back into Berkeley Square by way of Bruton Street. This, roughly, was the dragon’s line of route. He did not go exactly straight along it. He often swerved and zigzagged; and he made in the course of the night many long pauses. He would thrust his head into the mouth of some cave or hut, on the chance that some one had been so foolish as to hide there; or he would crane his neck up among the lower branches of a tall tree, scorching these with his breath, and peering up into the higher branches, where refugees might or might not be; or hewould just stay prone somewhere, doing nothing. For the rest, he pursued whom he saw. High speed he never achieved; but he had cunning, and had power to bewilder with fear. Before the night was out he was back again in his cave upon the hill. And the sleepless homelanders, forgathering in the dawn to hear and tell what things had befallen, gradually knew themselves to be the fewer by five souls.
It is often said that no ills are so hard to suffer as to anticipate. I do not know that this is true. But it does seem to be a fact that people comport themselves better under the incidence of an ill than under the menace of it; better also in their fear of an ill’s recurrence than when the ill is first feared. Some of the homelanders, you will have felt, had been rather ridiculous on the first day of the dragon’s presence among them. They had not been so in the watches of the night. Even Brud andhis dog had shown signs of courage and endurance. Even Thol had not cried much. Thia had behaved perfectly. But this is no more than you would expect of Thia. The point is that after their panic at the dragon’s first quick onset, the generality of the homelanders had behaved well. And now, haggard though they were in the dawn, wan, dishevelled, they were not without a certain collective dignity.
When everything had been told and heard, they stood for a while in silent mourning. The sun rose from the hills over the water, and with a common impulse they knelt to this great god, beseeching him that he would straightway call the dragon back beyond those hills, never to return. Then they looked up at the cave. To-day the dragon was wholly inside, his smoke rolling up from within the cave’s mouth. Long looked the homelanders for that glimmer of nether fire which would show that he was indeed moving forth. There was nothing for them to see but the black smoke. ‘Peradventure,’ said one, ‘the sun is not a god.’ ‘Nay,’ said another, ‘rather may it be that he is so great a god that we cannot know hispurposes, nor he be turned aside from them by our small woes.’ This was accounted a strange but a wise saying. ‘Nevertheless,’ said the sayer, ‘it is well that we should ask help of him in woes that to us are not small.’ So again the homelanders prayed, and though their prayer was still unanswered they felt themselves somehow strengthened.
It was agreed that they should disperse to their dwellings, eat, and presently reassemble in formal council.
And here I should mention Shib; for he was destined to be important in this council, though he was but a youth, and on his cheeks and chin the down had but begun to lengthen. I may as well also mention Veo, his brother, elder than him by one year. They were the sons of Oc and Loga, with whom they lived in a cave near the valley. Veo had large eyes which seemed to see nothing, but saw much. Shib had small eyes which seemed to see much, and saw it. Shib’s parents thought him very clever, as indeed he was. They thought Veo a fool; but Mr. Roger Fry, had he seen the mural drawings in theircave, would have assured them that he was a master.
Said Veo to Shib, as they followed their parents to the cave, ‘Though I prayed that he might not, I am glad that the dragon abides with us. His smoke is as the trunk of a great tree whose branches are the sky. When he comes crawling down the hill he is more beautiful than Thia dancing.’
Shib’s ideas about beauty were academic. Thia dancing, with a rose-bush on one side of her and a sunset on the other, was beautiful. The dragon was ugly. But Shib was not going to waste breath in argument with his absurd brother. What mattered was not that the dragon was ugly, but that the dragon was a public nuisance, to be abated if it could not be suppressed. The spearmen had failed to suppress it, and would continue to fail. But Shib thought he saw a way to abatement. He had carefully watched throughout the night the dragon’s demeanour. He had noted how, despite so many wanderers’ clear testimony as to the taste of all dragons, this creature had seemed to palter in choice betweenthe penned sheep near to him and the mobile people across the stream; noted that despite the great talons on his feet he did not attempt to climb any of the trees; noted the long rests he took here and there. On these observations Shib had formed a theory, and on this theory a scheme. And during the family meal in the cave he recited the speech he was going to make at the council. His parents were filled with admiration. Veo, however, did not listen to a word. Nor did he even attend the council. He stayed in the cave, making with a charred stick, on all vacant spaces, stark but spirited pictures of the dragon.
I will not report in even an abridged form the early proceedings of the council. For they were tedious. The speakers were many, halting, and not to the point. Shib, when his chance at length came, shone. He had a dry, unattractive manner; but he had something to say, he said itclearly and tersely, and so he held his audience.
Having stated the facts he had noted, he claimed no certainty for the deduction he had made from them. He did not say, ‘Know then surely, O homelanders, that this is a slothful dragon.’ Nor, for the matter of that, did he say he had furnished a working hypothesis, or a hypothesis that squared with the known facts, or a hypothesis that held the field. Such phrases, alas, were impossible in the simple and barbarous tongue of the homelanders. But ‘May it not be,’ Shib did say, ‘that this is a slothful dragon?’ There was a murmur of meditative assent. ‘Hearken then,’ said Shib, ‘to my counsel. Let the spearmen go slay two deer. Let the shepherds go slay two sheep, and the goat-herds two goats. Also let there be slain three geese and as many ducks. Or ever the sun leave us, and the dragon wake from his sleep, let us take all these up and lay them at the mouth of the cave that was Gra’s cave. Thus it may be that this night shall not be as the last was, but we all asleep and safe. And if so it betide us, let us make to thedragon other such offerings to-morrow, and on all days that are to come.’
There was prompt and unanimous agreement that this plan should be tried. The spearmen went hunting. Presently they returned with a buck and a roe. By this time the other animals prescribed had been slain in due number. It remained that the feast should be borne noiselessly up the hill and spread before the slumbering dragon. The homelanders surprised one another, surprised even themselves, by their zeal for a share of this task. Why should any one of them be wanting to do work that others could do? and willing to take a risk that others would take? Really they did not know. It was a strange foible. But there it was. A child can carry the largest of ducks; but as many as four men were lending a hand in porterage of a duck to-day. Not one of the porters enjoyed this work. But somehow they all wanted to do it, and did it with energy and good humour.
Very soon, up yonder on the flat shelf of ground in front of the cave’s mouth, lay temptingly ranged in a semicircular patterntwo goats, three ducks, two deer, three geese and two sheep. All had been done that was to be done. The homelanders suddenly began to feel the effects of their sleepless night. They would have denied that they were sleepy, but they felt a desire to lie down and think. The valley soon had a coverlet of sleeping figures, prone and supine. But, as you know, the mind has a way of waking us when it should; and the homelanders were all wide awake when the shadows began to lengthen.
Very still the air was; and very still stood those men and women and children, on the other side of the dividing stream. The sun, setting red behind them, sent their shadows across the stream, on and on slowly, to the very foot of the hill up to which they were so intently looking. The column of smoke, little by little, lost its flush. But anon it showed fitful glimpses of a brighter red at the base of it, making known that the dragon’s head was not inside the cave. And now it seemed to the homelanders, in these long moments, that their heartsceased beating, and all hope died in them. Suddenly—clash! the dragon’s jaws echoed all over the valley; and then what silence!
Through the veil of smoke, dimly, it was seen that the red glow rose, paused, fell—clash! again.
Twelve was a number that the homelanders could count up to quite correctly. Yet even after the twelfth clash they stood silent and still. Not till the red glow faded away into the cave did they feel sure that to-night all was well with them.
Then indeed a great deep sigh went up from the throng. There were people who laughed for joy; others who wept for the same reason. None was happier than Thia. She was on the very point of singing and dancing, but remembered her promise, and the exact wording of it, just in time. In all the valley there was but one person whose heart did not rejoice. This was Veo. He had come out late in the afternoon, to await, impatiently, the dragon’s reappearance. He had particularly wanted to study the action of the hind-legs, whichhe felt he had not caught rightly. Besides, he had wanted to see the whole magnificent creature again, just for the sight of it. Veo was very angry. Nobody, however, heeded him. Everybody heeded the more practical brother. It was a great evening for Oc and Loga. They were sorry there was a dragon in the homeland, but even more (for parents will be parents) were they proud of their boy’s success. The feelings of Thol, too, were not unmixed. Though none of the homelanders, except Thia, had ever shown him any kindness, he regretted the dragon, and was very glad that the dragon was not coming out to-night; but he was even gladder that the dragon had not been slain by the spearmen nor called back across the water by the sun. It was true that if either of these things had happened he could have gone to sleep comfortably in his own cave, and that he dared not sleep there now, and saw no prospect of sleeping there at all until he had slain the dragon. But he bethought him of the many empty caves on the way down to the marshes. And he moved into that less fashionable quarter—sulkily indeed,but without tears, and sustained by a great faith in the future.
On the morning of next day the homelanders prayed again to the sun that he would call the dragon away from them. He did not so. Therefore they besought him that he would forbid the dragon to come further than the cave’s mouth, and would cause him to be well-pleased with a feast like yesterday’s.
Such a feast, in the afternoon, was duly laid at the cave’s mouth; and again, when the sun was setting, the dragon did not come down the hill, but ate aloft there, and at the twelfth clash drew back his glowing jaws into the cave.
Day followed day, each with the same ritual and result.
Shib did not join in the prayers. He regarded them as inefficacious, and also as rather a slight to himself. The homelanders, be it said, intended no slight. They thoughtShib wonderfully clever, and were most grateful to him; but it never occurred to them to rank him among gods.
Veo always prayed heartily that the dragon should be called away forthwith. He wanted to see the dragon by daylight. But he did not pray that the dragon should not come forth in the evening. Better a twilit dragon than none at all.
Little Thol, though he prayed earnestly enough that the dragon should stay at home by night, never prayed for him to leave the homeland. He prayed that he himself might grow up very quickly, and be very big and very strong and very clever and very brave.
For the rest, the homelanders were all orthodox in their devotions.