One day as the youngest brother was climbing a mountain he put his hand on a stone to climb over, and it moved aside. There was a deep hole, and he believed his mother was down there, because he could hear voices. So he blew a loud blast and his brothers came to him. They made a basket and a long rope. The youngest brother climbed into the basket and they let him down.
When he reached the bottom he found three houses. In the first house he found a terrible dragon asleep before a big fire and snoring so loudly that he shook the earth. In the second house was an enormous dog, with eyes as big as saucers, but he was chained to the wall. In the third house he found a beautiful young princess, and his mother.
His mother told him the dragon had seized her in the king’s garden and had run away with her to this place. She was glad to see her son at first but when she thought of the terrible dragon that had brought her there, she begged him to go away.
The prince said that he was not afraid of the dragon, and would take them both home while the dragon was asleep. He put his mother in the basket, jerked the rope and his brothers pulled her up. They let the basket down again and he put the princess in, but before they could pull her up, the dragon awoke and rushed out of the house.
He was so angry that his scales rattled like rain on a tin roof, and he blew fire from his nostrils. The princess cried out with fear, and called for the prince to jump in the basket. He leaped in just as his brothers pulled them out of reach of the dragon’s tail.
Up they went, the dragon right after them. The brothers pulled fast and hard but the dragon gained on them. The prince, seeing that something had to be done, seized a handful of sand in the bottom of the basket and threw it right into the dragon’s eyes. The dragon roared with pain, but he stopped long enough to let the basket go out of his reach.
As soon as the prince and the princess were out of the hole the three brothers stopped it up with a big rock; but every now and then the dragon roars, and people say: “Another earthquake is coming,” but really it is only the dragon trying to get out.
AN ARMY OF TWO
Nobody knows what he can do until he tries.