dragon groaned and seemed disinclined to stir, but the boys kicked
him with their heels, and there was nothing for it but to gee-up.

After he had been up and down several times, and the boys' clothes were
nearly torn to pieces, he suddenly turned into a great crevice in the
rocks that led down into a dark passage, and the boys felt really
frightened for the first time. Daylight has a wonderfully bracing effect
on the nerves.

In a moment, however, a few rays of sunshine penetrated the black
darkness, and they saw that they were in a small cave. The next thing
they experienced was that the dragon shook himself violently, and the
small boys fell off his back like apples from a tree on to the wet and
sloppy floor. They picked themselves up again in a second, and there
they saw the dragon before them, panting after his exertions and filling
the cavern with a poisonous-smelling smoke. Helmut and Wolf and Werner
stood near the cracks which did the duty of windows, and held their
pistols pointed at him. Luckily he was too stupid to know that they were
only toy guns, and when they fired them off crack-crack, they soon
discovered that he was in a terrible fright.

"What have I done to you, young sirs?" he gasped out. "What have I done
to you, that you should want to shoot me? Yet shoot me! yes, destroy me
if you will and end my miserable existence!" He began to groan until the
cavern reverberated with his cries.

"What's the matter now, old chappie?" said Helmut, who, observing the
weakness of the enemy, had regained his courage.

"I am an anachronism," said the dragon, "don't you know what that
is?--well, I am one born out of my age. I am a survival of anything but
the fittest. _You_ are the masters now, you miserable floppy-looking
race of mankind. _You_ can shoot me, you can blow me up with dynamite,
you can poison me, you can stuff me--Oh, oh--you can put me into a cage
in the Zoological Gardens, you have flying dragons in the sky who could
drop on me suddenly and crush me. You have the power. We great creatures
of bygone ages have only been able to creep into the rocks and caves to
hide from your superior cleverness and your wily machinations. We must
perish while you go on like the brook for ever." So saying he began to
shed great tears, that dropped on the floor splash, splash, like the
water from the rocks.

The boys felt embarrassed: this was not their idea of manly conduct, and
considerably lowered their opinion