usy sweeping the stairs of the Lone Tower, but the dragon saw, and
he gave a cry of rage--and it was like twenty engines all letting off
steam at the top of their voices inside Cannon Street Station.

And the two lovers stood looking up at the dragon. He was dreadful to
look at. His head was white with age--and his beard had grown so long
that he caught his claws in it as he walked. His wings were white with
the salt that had settled on them from the spray of the sea. His tail
was long and thick and jointed and white, and had little legs to it, any
number of them--far too many--so that it looked like a very large fat
silkworm; and his claws were as long as lessons and as sharp as
bayonets.

"Good-bye, love!" cried Nigel, and ran out across the yellow sand toward
the sea. He had one end of a cord tied to his arm.

The dragon was clambering down the face of the cliff, and next moment he
was crawling and writhing and sprawling and wriggling across the beach
after Nigel, making great holes in the sand with his heavy feet--and the
very end of his tail, where there were no legs, made, as it dragged, a
mark in the sand such as you make when you launch a boat; and he
breathed fire till the wet sand hissed again, and the water of the
little rock pools got quite frightened, and all went off in steam.

Still Nigel held on and the dragon after him. The Princess could see
nothing for the steam, and she stood crying bitterly, but still holding
on tight with her right hand to the other end of the cord that Nigel had
told her to hold; while with her left she held the ship's chronometer,
and looked at it through her tears as he had bidden her look, so as to
know when to pull the rope.

On went Nigel over the sand, and on went the dragon after him. And the
tide was low, and sleepy little waves lapped the sand's edge.

Now at the lip of the water, Nigel paused and looked back, and the
dragon made a bound, beginning a scream of rage that was like all the
engines of all the railways in England. But it never uttered the second
half of that scream, for now it knew suddenly that it was sleepy--it
turned to hurry back to dry land, because sleeping near whirlpools is so
unsafe. But before it reached the shore sleep caught it and turned it to
stone. Nigel, seeing this, ran shoreward for his life--and the tide
began to flow in, and the time of the whirlpools' sleep was nearly over,
and he stumbled and he waded and he swam, and the Princess pu