Suddenly Helmut espied something round, and slimy, and long lying on the path before him like a blind worm, but much thicker than blind worms generally are. He became fearfully excited, "Come along you fellows, hurry up," he said, "I do believe it is the dragon's tail!"

They came up close behind him and looked over his shoulders; the gorge was so narrow here that they could not pa.s.s one another.

"Good gracious!" they said, "whatever shall we do now?"

They all felt frightened at the idea of a real dragon, but they stood to their guns like men, all but the youngest, Adolf, who wanted to run away home; but the others would not let him.

"Helmut catch hold of it, quick now," whispered Werner and Wolf, the other two boys.

Helmut stretched out his hand courageously; perhaps it was only a huge, blind worm after all; but as he tried to catch it, the thing slipped swiftly away. They all followed it, running as fast as they could through the narrow gorge, b.u.mping themselves against the walls, scratching themselves and tearing their clothes, but all the time Helmut never let that tail (if it was a tail) out of his sight.

"If we had some salt to put on it," said he, "we might catch it like a d.i.c.ky bird."

"It would be a fine thing to present to a museum," said Wolf.

Well, that thing led them a fine dance. It would stop short, and then when they thought they had got it, it started off again, until they were all puffing and blowing.

"We've got to catch it somehow," said Helmut, who thought the chase fine sport. At that moment the gorge opened out again into the woods, and the tail gave them the slip; for it disappeared in a crevice of the rock where there was no room for a boy to follow it.

"It _was_ a blind worm you see," said Werner.

Presently, however, they heard a noise as of thunder, and looking down the path they saw a head glaring at them out of the rocks, undeniably a dragon's head, with a huge jaw, red tongue, and rows of jagged teeth.

The boys stared aghast: they were in for an adventure this time, and no mistake. Slowly the dragon raised himself out of the rocks, so that they saw his whole scaly length, like a huge crocodile. Then he began to move along the path away from them. He moved quite slowly now, so there was no difficulty in keeping up with him; but his tail was so slimy and slippery that they could not keep hold of it; moreover it wriggled dreadfully whenever they tried to seize it. But Helmut had inherited the cool courage of the Wartburg knights, and he was not going to be overcome by difficulties.

With a wild Indian whoop he sprang on the dragon's back, and all the other boys followed his example, except little Adolf who was timid and began to set up a howl for his mother, I'm sorry to say. No sooner were the boys on his back than the dragon set off at a fine trot up and down the Dragon's Gorge, they had to hold on tight and to duck whenever the rock projected overhead, or when they went sharply round a corner.

"Hurrah," cried Helmut waving a flag, "this is better than a motor ride.

Isn't he a jolly old fellow?"

At this remark the jolly old fellow stopped dead and began to snort out fire and smoke, that made the boys cough and choke.

"Now stop that, will you!" said Helmut imperatively, "or we shall have to slay you after all, that's what we came out for you know." He pointed his gun at the head of the dragon as he spoke like a real hero.

The dragon began to tremble, and though they could only see his profile, they thought he turned pale.

"Where's that other little boy?" he asked in a hollow voice. "If you will give him to me for my dinner, I will spare you all."

Helmut laughed scornfully, "Thanks, old fellow," he said--"you're very kind, I'm sure Adolf would be much obliged to you. I expect he's run home to his mother long ago; he's a bit of a funk, we shan't take him with us another time."

"He looked so sweet and juicy and tender," said the dragon sighing, "I never get a child for dinner nowadays! Woe is me," he sniffed.

"You are an old cannibal," said the boys horrified, and mistaking the meaning of the word cannibal. "Hurry up now and give us another ride, it's first-rate fun this!"

The dragon groaned and seemed disinclined to stir, but the boys kicked him with their heels, and there was nothing for it but to gee-up.

After he had been up and down several times, and the boys' clothes were nearly torn to pieces, he suddenly turned into a great crevice in the rocks that led down into a dark pa.s.sage, and the boys felt really frightened for the first time. Daylight has a wonderfully bracing effect on the nerves.

In a moment, however, a few rays of sunshine penetrated the black darkness, and they saw that they were in a small cave. The next thing they experienced was that the dragon shook himself violently, and the small boys fell off his back like apples from a tree on to the wet and sloppy floor. They picked themselves up again in a second, and there they saw the dragon before them, panting after his exertions and filling the cavern with a poisonous-smelling smoke. Helmut and Wolf and Werner stood near the cracks which did the duty of windows, and held their pistols pointed at him. Luckily he was too stupid to know that they were only toy guns, and when they fired them off crack-crack, they soon discovered that he was in a terrible fright.

"What have I done to you, young sirs?" he gasped out. "What have I done to you, that you should want to shoot me? Yet shoot me! yes, destroy me if you will and end my miserable existence!" He began to groan until the cavern reverberated with his cries.

"What's the matter now, old chappie?" said Helmut, who, observing the weakness of the enemy, had regained his courage.

"I am an anachronism," said the dragon, "don't you know what that is?--well, I am one born out of my age. I am a survival of anything but the fittest. _You_ are the masters now, you miserable floppy-looking race of mankind. _You_ can shoot me, you can blow me up with dynamite, you can poison me, you can stuff me--Oh, oh--you can put me into a cage in the Zoological Gardens, you have flying dragons in the sky who could drop on me suddenly and crush me. You have the power. We great creatures of bygone ages have only been able to creep into the rocks and caves to hide from your superior cleverness and your wily machinations. We must perish while you go on like the brook for ever." So saying he began to shed great tears, that dropped on the floor splash, splash, like the water from the rocks.

The boys felt embarra.s.sed: this was not their idea of manly conduct, and considerably lowered their opinion of dragons in general.

"Do not betray me, young sirs," went on the dragon in a pathetic and weepy voice, "I have managed so far to lie here concealed though mult.i.tudes of people have pa.s.sed this way and never perceived me."

"I tell you what," said Helmut touched by the dragon's evident terror, "let's make friends with him, boys; he's given us a nice ride for nothing; we will present him with the flag of truce."

Turning to the dragon he said: "Allow us to give you a banana and a roll in token of our friendship and esteem."

"O," said the dragon brightening up, "I like bananas. People often throw the skins away here. I prefer them to orange peel. I live on such things, you must know, the cast-off refuse of humanity," he said, becoming tragic again.

They presented him with the banana, and he ate it skin and all, it seemed to give him an appet.i.te. He appeared to recover his spirits, and the boys thought it would be better to look for the way out. The cavern seemed quite smooth and round, except for the cracks through which the daylight came; they could not discover the pa.s.sage by which they had entered. The dragon's eyes were beginning to look bloodthirsty; remembrances of his former strength shot across his dulled brains. He could crush and eat these little boys after all and n.o.body would be the wiser. Little boys tasted nicer than bananas even.

Meanwhile Wolf and Werner had stuck their flags through the holes in the rocks, so that they were visible from the outside.

Now little Adolf had gone straight home, and had told awful tales of the games the others were up to, and he conducted the four mothers to the Dragon's Gorge where they wandered up and down looking for their boys.

Adolf observed the flags sticking up on the rocks, and drew attention to them. The Dragon's Gorge resounded with the cries of "Helmut! Wolf!

Werner!"

The dragon heard the voices as well; his evil intentions died away; the chronic fear of discovery came upon him again. He grew paler and paler; clouds of smoke came from his nostrils, until he became invisible. At the same moment Helmut groping against the wall that lay in shadow, found the opening of the pa.s.sage through which they had come. Through this the three boys now crawled, hardly daring to breathe, for fear of exciting the dragon again. Soon a gleam of light at the other end told of their deliverance. Their tender mothers fell on their necks, and scolded them at the same time. Truly, never did boys look dirtier or more disreputable.

"We feel positively ashamed to go home with you," their mothers said to them.

"Well, for once I was jolly glad you did come, mother," said Helmut.

"That treacherous old dragon wanted to turn on us after all; he might have devoured us, if you had not turned up in the nick of time. Not that I believe that he _really_ would have done anything of the sort, he was a coward you know, and when we levelled our guns at him he was awfully frightened. Still he _might_ have found out that our guns were not properly loaded, and then it would have been unpleasant."

Mother smiled, she did not seem to take the story quite so seriously as Helmut wished.

"We had a gorgeous ride on his back, mother dear; would you like to see him? You have only to lie down flat and squeeze yourself through that crack in the rocks till you come to his cave."

"No thank you," said mother, "I think I can do without seeing your dragon."

"Oh, we have forgotten our flags!" called out Wolf and Werner, "wait a minute for us," and they climbed up over the rocks and rescued the flags. "He's still in there," they whispered to Helmut in a mysterious whisper.

"Mother," said Helmut that evening when she came to wish him good night, "do you know, if you stand up to a dragon like a man, and are not afraid of him, he is not so difficult to vanquish after all."

"I'm glad you think so," said mother, "'Volo c.u.m Deo'--there is a Latin proverb for you; it means, that with G.o.d's help, will-power is the chief thing necessary; this even dragons know. Thus a little boy can conquer even greater dragons than the monsters vast of ages past."

"Hum!" said Helmut musingly, "mother, dear, I was a real hero to-day, I think you would have been proud of me; but I must confess between ourselves, that the old dragon was a bit of a fool!"

THE EASTER HARE