Part 2

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 climbed steadily. 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 having been 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 aspiration you 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 spearmen can 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 very red. 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 surmounted by 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 the dragon--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 he would 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 and his 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 his purposes, 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 their cave, 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 between the 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 it clearly 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 the dragon 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 pattern two 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 hearts ceased 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, which he 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.

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