Merrymineral tried hard to stop it, but he might as well have tried to stop a mad bull. As he could not stop, and the Owl was catching him up, he turned in his saddle and hurled his heavy battle-axe at the Owl; but the Owl caught it as it flew, and flung it back with such good aim and force that it hit the dragon on the back and cut it clean in half, so that it fell from under Merrymineral and left him standing on the ground.
But when he saw that the Owl was quite close to him, a wonder happened—for he suddenly caught fire at his feet and shot up into the air just as you may have seen a rocket do, and he shot right away, so that the last they saw of him was just as he disappeared over the mountains. But the Owl flew back to its mistress quite small again, and it perched once more on her shoulder as affectionately as ever. As to the golden dragon, it had disappeared altogether—and the funny part was that nothing was heard of it ever after, and no one knew how it had gone—so that the only thing that remained was the battle-axe, and that took seven men to lift it. However, the main thing was that Merrymineral had departed, and there seemed no likelihood of his returning.
So you may imagine how great the Princess’s joy was.
As soon as he had quite disappeared, she said:
‘That really does seem to be the last of him.’
But the Prince shook his head:
‘You never know when that sort of man will turn up again; and in the meantime what are we to do with the giant and the dwarf? I suppose we had better attack them at once and get rid of them.’
‘But why?’ asked the Princess. ‘They don’t seem to want to fight much, and why should we attack them? Let us go and ask them to go away quietly, and I should think they will.’
So they went up to where the giant and the dwarf and their forces were standing.