“I’m sorry, Father,” the boy said, in a milder tone. “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 merchant turned 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: