The dreadful dragon of Hay Hill

by Sir Max Beerbohm

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.