f Anis by doughty labourers armed with flails and scythes and
pitchforks. I had to drop the hens and rabbits, put my tail under my
arm, and run as fast as I could. Now I ask you, is it seemly for a
dragon of Cappadocia to run away like a robber with his tail under his
arm? Further, incommoded as I was by crests, horns, hooks, claws, and
scales, I barely escaped a brute who ran half an inch of his pitchfork
into my left thigh."

As he said this he carefully ran his hand over the insulted part, and,
after giving himself up for a few moments to bitter meditation:

"What idiots those Penguins are! I am tired of blowing flames in the
faces of such imbeciles. Orberosia, do you hear me?"

Having thus spoken the hero raised his terrible helmet in his hands and
gazed at it for a long time in gloomy silence. Then he pronounced these
rapid words:

"I have made this helmet with my own hands in the shape of a fish's
head, covering it with the skin of a seal. To make it more terrible I
have put on it the horns of a bull and I have given it a boar's jaws;
I have hung from it a horse's tail dyed vermilion. When in the gloomy
twilight I threw it over my shoulders no inhabitant of this island had
courage to withstand its sight. Women and children, young men and old
men fled distracted at its approach, and I carried terror among the
whole race of Penguins. By what advice does that insolent people lose
its earlier fears and dare to-day to behold these horrible jaws and to
attack this terrible crest?"

And throwing his helmet on the rocky soil:

"Perish, deceitful helmet!" cried Kraken. "I swear by all the demons of
Armor that I will never bear you upon my head again."

And having uttered this oath he stamped upon his helmet, his gloves, his
boots, and upon his tail with its twisted folds.

"Kraken," said the fair Orberosia, "will you allow your servant to
employ artifice to save your reputation and your goods? Do not despise a
woman's help. You need it, for all men are imbeciles."

"Woman," asked Kraken, "what are your plans?"

And the fair Orberosia informed her husband that the monks were going
through the villages teaching the inhabitants the best way of combating
the dragon; that, according to their instructions, the beast would be
overcome by a virgin, and that if a maid placed her girdle around the
dragon's neck she could lead him as easily as if he were a little dog.

"How do you know that the monks teach this?" asked Kr