The Boy and the Dragon

One day, clambering higher than every before, he came to a lofty ledge of rock at the foot of a still higher cliff, and paused in surprise. For there, all by itself, was a baby dragon not two feet long.

Thoas knew that there were dragon far up on the mountains, higher than he had ever been able to climb: he had seen them occasionally, so far away that they might have been no more than eagles. But he had never come closer to one, and he now looked with great interest and excitement at the little dragon on the ledge.

Very soon he saw that it was weak as if from want of food and water, and realized that it must have fallen or fluttered down the cliff from somewhere far above.

Gently Thoas took up the little dragon in his arms and carried it down the mountain side until he came to a stream. Here he let it drink, and fed it with fruit and herbs, until it seemed to be recovering from its weakness.

He expected that it would run away in search of its mother; but instead, when he got up to go home, the dragon followed him, making a hissing sound that might almost have been a purr.

Thoas brought the dragon all the way to his village and settled it on his own bed in the little cave in the rock against which his father’s house of rough stones and wood was built.

The shepherd and his elder sons wished to kill the dragon immediately. But Thoas begged them to spare it:

“He would have died if I had left him on the ledge,” he said. “And when I carried him down and fed him, he followed me of his own free will. I will keep him in my cave, and feed him. He does no harm, and eats only fruit and herbs.”

“It will be different when he grows to full size,” said the shepherd. “Then he will be taking our lambs, and later the sheep themselves.”

But he was not an unkind mand, and he at length allowed Thoas to keep his strange pet “for a time at least”.

So Thoas kept the little dragon in his cave and fed and tended it. During the day, wherever Thoas went, the dragon followed him; and at night they slept in the same bed - for this sort of dragon did not breath fire.

The dragon grew very quickly, however, and Thoas found it more and more difficult to collect enough fruit and herbs to satisfy it. But still each evening they would share Thoas’s bowl of wine, and then sleep soundly on the bed in the cave.

The shepherd, however, was troubled. “That dragon will very soon become dangerous,” he said to the other shepherds as they sat under the big oak tree in the village sipping their strong drink distilled out of the skins and pips left over after making the wine.

Then each would tell terrible tales of dragon who had come down from the mountains and devoured whole flocks of sheep, and sometimes the shepherd himself so that not a trace was left.

Soon they decided that they must get rid of the dragon. The shepherd knew that Thoas would be heartbroken if they simple killed it, so he devised a scheme to which his friends agreed reluctantly.

One evening they mixed strong spirits with the wine that Thoas and the dragon had before going to bed, so that the two sank into such a deep sleep that nothing would wake them.

Then the shepherd and his friends took up the bed with Thoas and the dragon on it, and carried it away to a distant, stony hillside. Here they left the dragon, and brought Thoas back to his cave, still sleeping.

Next morning Thoas looked in vain for his dragon, and was very sad and troubled for his loss.

“The time had come for him to seek his own kind,” said the shepherd. “No wild creature will stay with us for long. Do not grieve, it is best so. But think of him with a mate and baby dragons of his own, happy in a cave near the mountain tops where no man could ever climb.”

So Thoas did not seek for the dragon, and in time got over his regret for the loss of his strange companion, and made friends with other and more usual creatures.

But a few years later when he was already almost a grown man, Thoas happened to be on a journey through the mountains with a store of wool to sell at one of the small towns on the coast of Arcadia.

In a lonely pass he was set upon by a band of robbers who not only took the wool, but began to beat him cruelly.

Partly with the pain, and partly in case any assistance might be near, Thoas cried out for help as loudly as he could.

Dragons can see further and hear more acutely than any other creatures; and now, in his cave far up the mountain high above, the dragon heard and recognized the voice of his long-ago friend.

Down he came like a storm cloud, hissing and roaring so terribly that the robber turned and fled in terror - only to fall one by one beneath the claws of the dragon.

When all were dead, the dragon returned to where Thoas was lyinginsensible. Very carefully he lifted him and bore him away to his cave in the mountains. There Thoas lived for many days, the great dragon bringing him food and pouring water on his wounds until he was quite recovered from the cruel attack of the robbers.

Then the dragon took Thoas up once more in this mighty claws and carried him over hill and valley to the very hillside when he himself had been left by the shepherds.

There he left him, and Thoas walked back in safety to his village where he told the strange tale of the dragon how had remembered his old friend and come to save him from mortal danger, bearing no grudge for aving himself been cast out and left in the wilderness.