THE MONSTER-HUNTERS
THE MONSTER-HUNTERS
THE MONSTER-HUNTERSCHAPTER IKILLING THE LAST DRAGON
THE MONSTER-HUNTERS
“Father, I want a dragon!”
The shrewd old merchant lowered the evening newspaper he was diligently reading, and looked over it at his son.
“All right, my boy,” he said with a smile; “go ahead and get one.”
“But I mean a real dragon!”
“About how big, Perry?”
“I’d like one about a hundred feet long, if I could find it.”
“You don’t want much,” was his father’s half-humorous reply, as he folded the newspaper so that he could read the next column with more ease. After a few moments, pursuing the subject, he continued,
“Is there any particular breed of dragon that you’re after?”
“What I really want,” the boy answered, “isone of those spiny ones—the sort Uncle George discovered out West.”
The keen old financier looked thoughtful, then deliberately took off his reading-glasses, laid down the paper and turned to the boy.
“You’re talking about fossil monsters, then,” he said.
“Yes, Father, that’s it exactly. And I do hope you’ll let me do it!”
The boy’s earnestness was evident, and he knew he could count on his father, for they had always been close friends.
“Let you do what?” the merchant queried in response. “I suppose all this preamble about a dragon means that you have some crazy notion in your head. Come along, son, tell me all about it.”
This was the chance for which Perry Hunt had long been waiting, and he snatched eagerly at it.
“There’s a chap I know,” he sputtered, “who’s going ’way out to the South Dakota Bad Lands to prospect for fossils. He’s a freshman at Princeton, and it’s their expedition. He told me he was sure he would be able to take me along, if I could fix things up at my end. I’ve always been wild to go fossil-hunting, Father, and this is a real chance. Can’t I go?”
Mr. Hunt tapped the ash from the end of his cigar and looked inquiringly at his son.
“What in thunder do you know about fossils?” he asked, abruptly.
Perry colored. He was inclined to be shy about the things for which he really cared, and he had never before talked to his father about his hobby. The great secret of his boyhood had been a passionate interest in the strange creatures which used to wander over the earth, millions of years before the first man. Mr. Hunt had a sharp, quizzical tongue, and Perry was afraid of being misunderstood and ridiculed. Now, however, the time for concealment was past and he spoke up valiantly.
“I’ve read nearly everything I could get hold of, along that line,” he replied, “and I’ve hung around our little Museum a lot. The curators and everybody have been bully to me down there, and they’ve let me putter about in the workshops. I really have learned quite a bit about fossils, Father, and Mr. Cavalier has shown me how to draw. I’ve drawn heaps!”
“The deuce you have!” the other commented. “Got any of those drawings still?”
The boy nodded.
“Let me see them, Perry—that is, if you don’t mind.”
Still a little flushed with confusion, the boy went to his own room and came back a few minutes later with a sketch-book. His father turned over the pages. The drawings covered a period of several years, and though the first were crude, the later ones were quite well done. Those dated during the last year showed the results of real study. There was no doubting that the lad had picked up a fair knowledge of gross anatomy in following his hobby.
Most of the pictures were copies from illustrations in scientific books or were drawn from models in the Museum. But there were a few, here and there, that were just fancy, idle sketches drawn for amusement’s sake. Over one of these—a picture-book dragon with scales and a snaky tail—the old merchant paused, smiling. Several minutes elapsed before he turned the page. He went through the book twice without saying a word. At last he spoke.
“In the second drawer from the bottom, in that cabinet,” he said, pointing to an old cupboard which Perry had never seen unlocked, and at the same time handing a key to the boy, “you willfind a large book bound in faded green leather. Bring it here.”
Although rebuffed by his failure to get a direct answer to his appeal for permission to go on the expedition, Perry took the key. He felt that, in some way, his present quest was connected with the question he had raised, and as he unlocked the cupboard, the boy wondered. In the drawer he found the faded book, with its cover of green Russian leather all dry and crumbling to the touch, and brought it to his father. Still without comment, the old merchant slowly untied the string that held the covers of the ancient book together, and opening it carefully, turned to the first page.
There, drawn with childish detail, was a picture of a dragon such as men in the Middle Ages believed that creature really to be, with two legs armed with claws, spiked wings, a long powerful tail, scales, and a ferocious-looking head with jaws wide open, disclosing pointed teeth, while from the throat, flames and smoke were pouring in volumes.
The boy looked up.
“Why, Father—” he began.
With a faint smile, the old merchant pointedto the date at the bottom of the drawing, its pencil marks so faint as to be almost indistinguishable.
“I must have been nine years old, then,” he said. “I can remember well when I drew that beast. Father had a queer old Latin book, a sort of mediæval natural history, and it gave a drawing of every supposedly known beast in the world. This was one of them. At that time I believed that a dragon was as real as a lion or an elephant. To tell you the truth, Perry, I’ve never quite got away from the feeling of that old book of Aldrovandus, his beasts were so much a part of my childhood. When I was a youngster I was convinced that any adventurous boy could find plenty of dragons like this one, if he only went to the right place to look for them.”
“And did the book tell you where to look?”
“It did, exactly. It described a region south of Ethiopicus—that was Upper Egypt—where a vast region was uninhabited by men because of the presence of three or four of these monsters. I was determined to go there some day and kill a dragon.”
“And you took it all in, Father?”
“Why not? Only a couple of years before,Stanley rescued Livingstone in the first great exploration across Africa. The region that Aldrovandus wrote about, north of the Victoria Nyassa, in my day was still an absolutely unexplored territory. Anything might be there, even dragons.”
“I should think you’d have known there weren’t any real dragons,” protested Perry, with the cocksureness of a boy.
“I had sense enough to know that I didn’t know it all,” said his father with a snort, emphasizing the personal pronoun. “Why even in your lifetime, boy, scientists have found an animal that no one had ever heard of before, still living in the African forests.”
“What was that, Father?”
“The okapi, a sort of giraffe with daggershaped horns and striped on the legs something like a zebra. And that discovery is a good example of the sort of thing I mean.
“Naturalists once used to laugh at some of the old pictures on the Egyptian temples which showed a beast like a cross between an antelope and a zebra, with stripes. One of the heads of the god Set, too, was unlike any animal known in the world. But when, in 1901, the first okapi was caught by Sir H. H. Johnstone in the Semlikiforest in Uganda, it was found that the old Egyptians of three thousand years ago were right, and that the modern naturalists were wrong in their disbelief. So you see, Perry, lots of things are possible that one would never expect.”
“But a dragon, Father! It’s such a made-up sort of beast—wings, teeth, snake’s tail and all that sort of thing!”
“Don’t trouble yourself about that,” his father answered, “there are plenty of dragons with wings, teeth and a snake’s tail, and, what’s more, Science calls them dragons.Draco volans, the flying dragon, that’s their real name, my boy. But they are all small, none of them more than ten inches in length, including the tail.”
“Never heard of them,” said Perry, incredulously.
“If you don’t want me to think you a born idiot,” his father answered sharply, “don’t let me catch you taking that tone, suggesting that a thing doesn’t exist because you don’t know about it. There are a few million things that you don’t know now, and when you get older and have more sense, you’ll find a few million more things that you don’t know.”
“I’m sorry, Father,” the boy said, in a mildertone. “I didn’t mean to be uppish. Won’t you tell me about the ‘flying dragon’?”
“They are small lizards,” his father answered, “living throughout Malasia and in Madagascar. They have a long lizard-like tail, four inches in length, a fierce-looking head with a frill around it to make them look ferocious, and the skin from the body to the four legs is stretched out like that of a flying squirrel. If they were bigger, they could play the dragon’s part well enough. But, as I was saying, in my young days there wasn’t any good reason why I should disbelieve the dragon. Aldrovandus said he possessed the skin of one, and that seemed good enough proof for me. Yet I think I would have said less about my belief in dragons, if I had any idea where it would land me. I don’t think I ever told you the story of my fight with a dragon, did I?”
“A real sure-enough fight?”
“An actual fight with an actual dragon,” said his father, with a smile.
“But how could you?”
“I did have one, just the same.”
“I don’t understand you a bit. Won’t you tell the story, Father?”
Without answering directly, the old merchantturned over page after page of the drawing-book, its pages browned and the pencil-sketches faded with age, but all filled with dragons—every kind of dragon that the boy of forty years ago had been able to discover or invent. At last he stopped before a picture of a weird beast, that looked like a cross between a man-eating tiger, a Chinese dragon, an alligator, and a boa-constrictor, which was breathing out fire and smoke as though it had a gas-works in its inside. In front of the dragon was represented a small boy, about as tall as the dragon’s claw was long, and the youngster was sticking a knife as big as himself into the monster’s breast. In the near distance, quite out of perspective, were a number of people running away in terror.
“There,” the old merchant said, with a mixture of amusement and complaisance, “that was the beast I fought. Isn’t that a sure-enough dragon for you?”
After his former rebuke, Perry was a little dubious about seeming too skeptical, but he could not help saying:
“Well, that’s hardly a photograph, is it, after all?”
“No,” his father answered, “it’s not. I supposeI’ll have to admit that it is partly imaginative. But the dragon I fought was something like that.”
“You’ve got me guessing,” the boy admitted. “Won’t you tell me the story, Father? It ought to be a great yarn.”
“I suppose I’ll have to,” the other agreed, “since I’ve led you on so far.” He reached out for a new cigar, clipped it, lighted it, and when sure that it was drawing properly, leant back in his chair and began.
“I suppose I was about thirteen years old,” he said reminiscently, “when this famous combat was held. At that time my folks were living at a small place called Proctor’s Cave, on the Green River, in Kentucky, not far from the Mammoth Cave. As you probably know, Perry, that whole section is just riddled with caves, made by the gradual dissolving of the limestone rock through the action of underground rivers. Most of them, too, are full of stalactites.
“Proctor’s Cave, right on the river, was quite a growing town, and though it was small, there was a right smart heap of children in proportion to its size. About thirty-five boys around my age went to the school there. I can remember thenumber because we were divided into two gangs. Ours had fifteen members and the other had twenty.”
“I suppose you were ‘boss’ of your gang, Father?”
“I was the ‘War-Chief,’” was the smiling response. “Our gang was called the ‘Indians’ and the others were the ‘Pioneers.’ You can see that it was natural for us always to be ready for a fight. Everything was taken in good part, though, until one day we caught one of the chaps in the other gang and scalped him.”
“You didn’t really scalp him!”
“No, not exactly. There were limits, Perry, even in my young days. But the victim thought it was genuine. That’s where the trouble came in.”
“How was it, Father?” pleaded the boy, fairly wriggling with excitement.
“As I remember,” the old merchant continued, musingly, “a week or so before, the ‘Pioneers’ had got hold of one of our gang and had given him the ‘third degree.’ They said that if he was an ‘Indian’ he ought to look like one. To make sure of it, they gave him a coat of war-paint with some stuff they got from a drug store,and the war-paint wouldn’t wash off. It wouldn’t even scrape off. It was nearly a month before it wore off.
“Our turn came when this ‘Pioneer’ was delivered into our hands. We told him we were going to have our revenge, and I tell you, he was scared stiff! We brought the youngster to our own private ‘Indian’ cave, and there we discussed tortures, so that he could hear what was being said. Each one of us had some kind of torment more excruciating than the last.”
“It sure must have been blood-curdling to the chap who was listening,” put in Perry, with an appreciative grin.
“I haven’t a doubt of it,” his father agreed. “Finally, we came to a formal decision and informed the victim that he was to be scalped alive. You should have heard him yell! However, yelling didn’t do any good, for the cave was half a mile from town and a couple of hundred feet underground, and he would have had to hoot like a Mississippi River steamboat in order to be heard at all. So we went ahead and scalped him.”
“How, Father?” queried the boy, eagerly.
“We made quite a ceremony of it,” was the reply. “First of all, we gathered a lot of stingingnettles that grew outside the cave and mashed them up with vinegar in an old tin can. The vinegar, you know, holds the sting; it even seems to make it stronger. Then, in an old iron pot we had, we mixed up a lot of corn syrup and red ink—we always used that in our initiation powwow, and it certainly did look and feel like blood.
“Next we blindfolded the unfortunate ‘Pioneer.’ We dipped a piece of string in the nettle juice and tied it loosely round his head, and sprinkled his head with the nettle vinegar, knowing that it would only take a minute or two before it began to sting. Then we took his cap, dipped it into the red ink and syrup, and clapped it—not boiling, but still fairly hot—on his head. At the same instant, one of the ‘braves’ stuck a bit of stick in a loop of the nettle-soaked string and twisted it tight, also running his thumbnail around, as if it were a knife. The cap and the blindfold were then yanked off together.
“The youngster gave just one look. He saw the cap, all blood, in the other fellow’s hand, and jumped to the conclusion that it was his scalp. The tight string around his forehead felt like a cut and the nettles began to sting like blazes. He put his hand up to his head, felt the stickywetness, looked at his hand, all red, let out an earpiercing screech, and started to run. That was forty years ago, but I believe he’d have been running yet, if he hadn’t bumped into some one on the road.
“Help! I’ve been scalped!’ he yelled.
“I reckon he must have given the farmer a jolt, for while we were a good way from the Indian country, still there were plenty of ‘hostiles’ about, and any day there might be a raid. This was about the time of the Little Big Horn Massacre.”
“You mean Custer’s last stand?”
“Yes. So, you see, the farmer had reason enough to be startled. As soon as he had a good look at the boy, though, he saw that the youngster was only frightened. He cut the nettle string from the lad’s head, washed off in the nearest brook as much of the red ink and corn syrup as he could, and started for town.
“I thought we were in for real trouble, but to do that boy’s father plain justice, I’ll admit he was a good sport. Though he was as mad as a hornet, he was fair. He gave me a good tongue-lashing, and told me—which was true—that I ought to have had more sense, as the boy mighthave been killed with fright. He repeated to me the old story of the man who was ordered to be beheaded, and who died when a cup of cold water was dashed on his neck in joke. Still, he said it was a boys’ row, he remembered when he was a boy himself, and it wasn’t his business to interfere. He added that he hoped I would get my medicine from the other gang, twice as hot as I had given it.”
“That was fair enough, Father.”
“Indeed it was. But even he was satisfied with what I got in return.”
“What was it?”
The old merchant rolled up his sleeve to the shoulder, and showed his son a white scar running down almost the whole length of the upper arm. The wound had evidently been a deep one.
“I got that from the dragon,” he said.
“You’d a real fight, then?” ejaculated Perry, surprised at this evidence of an actual encounter.
“I was laid up for nearly a month,” was the reply. “But they didn’t build any statues to me as they did to St. George, when he slew the dragon, and no one gave me a triumph, as the people of Rome did to Regulus over his combat with a monster.”
“I never heard of the Regulus story,” Perry said.
“It wasn’t a story,” his father corrected him, “it was a real fight, like mine. Or at least it was said to be a real fight. Regulus sent home the skin of his dragon, and it was carried before him in his triumph.”
“But I thought all those dragon fights were just fairy tales!”
“Most of them are,” his father answered. “With the exception of mine, I think Regulus’ fight with the dragon is the only one that is supposed to be attested by history. Do you want to hear about it?”
“I’d rather hear yours,” Perry replied.
“I’ll come to that presently,” the merchant assured him, “and the story of Regulus may put you in the right frame of mind to hear about my prowess.
“Marcus Atillius Regulus, almost the only historical character to have fought with a dragon,” he began, “bore one of the noblest names in Rome. You may have learned in school, Perry, how he ravaged the shores of Africa and brought Carthage into subjection, but that, at the last moment, he was defeated. As a prisoner, he was sentby Carthage on an embassy to make peace, upon his own honorable promise to return to his foes to die by torture unless his embassy of peace was successful. On arriving at Rome, Regulus gave the message with which he had been entrusted by the Carthaginians, but ended with a patriotic appeal to Rome not to let their affection and loyalty to him overtop their honor.
“‘Let the prisoners be left to perish unheeded,’ he said, ‘let war go on till Carthage be subdued.’ His counsel prevailed, the offers of peace were refused, and Regulus returned voluntarily to Carthage. The Romans have enshrined the name of Regulus high in the pages of honor, but the Carthaginians had little understanding of valor and good faith. They cut off his eyelids, placed him in a barrel spiked with nails, knocked the head of the barrel out and fastened him there so that he was immovable. Even his hands were tied. Then they exposed him, naked, to the glare of an African sun, to die by the slow agonies of thirst, fever, the scorch of the sun upon the unprotected eyeballs, and the stinging insects of the desert.”
“But Rome got back at them?”
“Yes,” his father answered, “Scipio Africanuscaptured Carthage, leveled every house to ground, sowed salt on the ruins and in the name of Rome forbade any building to be erected there again. But I’ve told you the story of Regulus, son, so that you might see that such a man was scarcely likely to invent a story about a dragon to help his reputation.”
“Where did he fight the dragon? In Africa, too?”
“Not very far from Carthage. It was in the year 256B.C., after the first Punic War had been raging for eight years, that Regulus captured the city of Utica, about sixty miles northwest of Carthage, near the modern city of Tunis. Between Utica and Carthage flowed a river, then called the Bagrada, difficult to cross except at one ford. When Regulus and his soldiers came to this ford, they found the passage disputed by an enormous dragon, one hundred and twenty feet long.”
“A real monster!” ejaculated the boy.
“Wasn’t he? And, so the old Roman historian tells, the skin of the monster was so tough that the Romans could not pierce his hide. Several times Regulus led the attack upon the dragon, but each time the beast killed and devoured several of the soldiers. At last Regulus brought up theartillery, the ballistæ and catapults, and bombarded the dragon. Supported by the artillery, Regulus plunged across the river alone, fought the dragon single-handed and slit his throat. The skin was carried to Rome and graced Regulus’ triumph.”
“What do you suppose it really was?” queried the boy.
“I think,” his father answered, “it must have been a huge crocodile. That would explain why the Roman swords could not pierce the so-called dragon’s hide, and why the combat seems to have taken place at the ford of a river.”
“But a hundred and twenty feet long, Father!”
“Possibly that was worked out from the skeleton. In those days it would be quite easy to put the backbones of several animals together. That trick was done only thirty years ago, when Dr. Albert Koch collected the bones of two or three Zeuglodons or primitive whales and made a monster which he called ‘Hydrarchus, the Water King,’ and which he exhibited all over Europe. Regulus’ dragon, carried in his triumph, might have been something of the kind. As for the Zeuglodons, I’ve often thought that the discovery of skeletons of antediluvian beasts might have beenone of the reasons for popular belief in dragons.”
DRAGON SLAIN BY REGULUS. (upper left)SCYLLA OF THE SEVEN HEADS. (upper right)MERMAN FROM THE MEDITERRANEAN. (lower left)THE DRAGON OF THE DRACHENFELS. (lower right)Monsters Thought Real by the Ancients.These pictures are taken from professedly scientific works of the Middle Ages.
DRAGON SLAIN BY REGULUS. (upper left)SCYLLA OF THE SEVEN HEADS. (upper right)MERMAN FROM THE MEDITERRANEAN. (lower left)THE DRAGON OF THE DRACHENFELS. (lower right)Monsters Thought Real by the Ancients.These pictures are taken from professedly scientific works of the Middle Ages.
DRAGON SLAIN BY REGULUS. (upper left)SCYLLA OF THE SEVEN HEADS. (upper right)MERMAN FROM THE MEDITERRANEAN. (lower left)THE DRAGON OF THE DRACHENFELS. (lower right)
DRAGON SLAIN BY REGULUS. (upper left)
SCYLLA OF THE SEVEN HEADS. (upper right)
MERMAN FROM THE MEDITERRANEAN. (lower left)
THE DRAGON OF THE DRACHENFELS. (lower right)
Monsters Thought Real by the Ancients.
These pictures are taken from professedly scientific works of the Middle Ages.
“Was yours one of that kind?”
“Mine,” said his father, with a twinkle in his eye, “was a real dragon.”
“But it couldn’t be, Father. You said the other gang had something to do with it!”
“They unearthed him from his lair,” the other answered. “I suppose I’ll have to tell you just how it all happened, Perry, and then you’ll see if you don’t think I deserve a triumph, just as much as Regulus did!”
The boy waited expectantly, and, in a moment, his father continued:
“All that summer, the summer after the scalping, I was on the lookout for squalls, but nothing happened. The ‘Pioneers’ didn’t seem to be trying to get their revenge, or if they were trying, we were too much on the alert. I afterwards found out that they had been laying plans all summer, but that none of them had worked. It was not until the autumn that their plot came to a head.
“One evening, late in October, when it was already beginning to get dark early, I was delayed in going to the cave. It was one of the regular evenings for a meeting and we had somethingvery important to do—I forget what, now—so I was running at a good clip. Just as I struck the little hidden path that diverged toward the cave, I heard the fellows talking loudly, in excited tones. Wondering what could have happened, for it was one of the rules always to approach the hiding place in silence, I quickened my run still more, and in a minute or two, burst upon the fellows who were gathered in a clump not far from the entrance to the cave. The second I appeared, three or four of them shouted, in a breath:
“‘Chief! There’s a dragon in the cave!’
“I told you, Perry, that I’d always done a lot of talking about dragons, and this ought to have made me suspicious. But I’d been reading, a day or two before, about Regulus, and all my early interest had been suddenly awakened. As I look back on it now, I don’t think doubt even entered my mind. The gang was evidently so scared that the scare got into my bones, too.
“I found out that one of the smallest of the boys had come early and gone into the cave, and that he had rushed out again, screaming to another fellow, who was just coming up the path, that in the cave there was a huge dragon, with a shiningtail, breathing out flames. He said it had roared at him and that it was as long as a barge.
“The older boy, he was ‘Chief Brave’ and second in command of the gang, had laughed at him, picked up a chunk of wood for a club, and started for the opening. Half-way down, he heard the growling of some beast and his courage oozed out. Without going in to see what it was, he bolted out again as promptly as the little lad had done. He was afraid the dragon would follow him, but nothing appeared. None of the rest of the gang had volunteered. They waited for me to show up, and tell them what to do. It wasn’t that I was any bigger, son, but, after all, I was ‘War Chief’ and it was my part to lead them on.
“If there had only been the little fellow’s story,” the old merchant continued, “I don’t think I’d have felt the same way about it. But the ‘Chief Brave’ was not only a plucky sort, but I depended a good deal on his judgment. As I saw it, there was only one thing to do, and that was—to face the monster and find out what could be done. If I could really slay a dragon, I thought, I should go down in history with Siegfried and Beowulf and all the rest of them. So I loaded an old horse pistol that we had, and, more forshow than anything else, stuck a bowie knife in my belt and started into the tunnel-like opening of the cave, the gang following cautiously behind.
“I tell you, my boy, it was mighty uncomfortable, creeping through that long, black passage, hearing nothing but the hard breathing of the frightened fellows behind. And when, about halfway down, the silence was suddenly broken by a savage, whining snarl, I had a feeling that ice was being rubbed down my spine. It wasn’t quite my idea of a dragon’s roar, it was worse, there was such an evil relish in the sound that the flesh under my hair just crawled.
“If I had been alone, I’d have done the same thing as the others did, I’d have turned tail and got out of that place as quickly as I could. But the gang was behind me. I was afraid, afraid to death, of that snarl in front, but the fear of ridicule was even stronger. I would rather be clawed to death by a dragon than be guyed as a coward. So, gripping the pistol closer, I crawled forward.
“I think I could have walked with more confidence, but on hands and knees, it was ghastly. I could put my hands out without difficulty, but the fear sent a spasm into my knees so that itwas hard to move them. Still, foot by foot, ever hearing that malignant whine grow closer, I groped my way through the opening. It was only fifty feet long, but it seemed interminable. At last I saw the light and, with a huge sense of relief, leaped from the narrow tunnel into the cave itself.
“I leaped almost into the monster’s jaws. For, facing the mouth of the tunnel, not six paces away, was the dragon, growling and snapping, while every few seconds he followed the clash of the gnashing teeth with that long whining snarl that had so scared me during that endless crawl in the dark.”
“What did he look like, Father?”
“In the half-dusk of the cave he looked fearful! In my excitement he looked every inch a dragon. The front part of him was like a wolverine, and his body all glittered with silver scales. Behind him he dragged a thick tail, something like an alligator’s, only round, all covered with shiny scales.”
“How about the fire-breathing business?”
“I didn’t stop to notice. I was too excited and too frightened to bother myself with thinking what breed of dragon he was. I aimed theold pistol and fired. The ‘kick’ of it nearly broke my wrist. At the same instant, the dragon lifted himself heavily, dragging his hinder part, and launched full at me. I shrank back, flat against the wall of the cave, and his spring fell short. The hot froth and blood on his fangs slathered on my coat, and I knew that the monster was badly hurt. There was little room to dodge in that cave, but I jumped sideways.
“He turned jerkily, and I saw that his huge tail was injured. For the first time, my spirits rose. It was his tail I had feared. I had been afraid that he would lash out with it, crushing me to pieces. If, however, he were already hurt, I might be able to dodge about him, and get the best of him yet. But he could move quicker than I thought.
“Before I realized it, he was on me. Again he sprang, with that curious dragging of his hinder parts as though they were paralyzed. I had no room to dodge away, for the wall of the cave was behind me. In desperation, I pulled out my bowie knife. Before I could lunge, however, a paw with curved claws like Turkish daggers flashed out and laid my left arm open to the bone.
“Reeling from pain and the loss of blood, Istruck forward with the knife. I hit some kind of a bone, I remember, then felt the curious sense of the blade piercing through living flesh. Again the monster reared. I swayed back, too far gone to move my feet, which seemed fastened to the floor of the cave. But as I stared, almost fascinated, into the green light of the creature’s eyes, I saw a glaze pass over them. He reared, wavered and fell over in a heap. Almost I collapsed upon him myself, but as I tottered, one of the fellows sprang out from the mouth of the cave and caught me. He snatched the bowie to give another blow, but the dragon never moved again. My knife had reached the heart.”