Part 9

"But what are you going to do with the rake?" said Mary.

"One doesn't go to seek a dragon without weapons," I replied with dignity. "And a rake is a much more formidable weapon in the hands of a man who knows how to rake than a gun in the hands of a man who doesn't know how to shoot." I am something of an amateur gardener, but not at all the holder of a record at clay pigeons nor king of a Schuetzen-verein. So I carried my rake.

"Then what weapon shall I carry?" asks Mary.

I ponder seriously.

"A tin lunch-pail," I finally reply.

"With luncheon in?" asks Mary.

"Empty," I say.

So we start.

I have already said that Lagunita is a pretty little lake. It lies just under the first of the foothills that rise ridge after ridge into the forested mountains that separate us from the ocean. Indeed, it is on the first low step up from the valley floor, and from its enclosing bank or shore one gets a good view of the level, reaching valley thickly set with live-oak trees and houses and fields. Around the little lake have grown up pines, willows and other beautiful trees, and at one side a tiny stream comes in during the wet season. There is no regular outlet, but the water which usually begins to come in about November keeps filling the shallow bowl of the lake higher and higher until by spring it is nearly bank full and may even overflow. Then as the long dry summer season sets in, the level of the water grows lower and lower until in August or September there is only left a small muddy puddle crammed with surprised and despairing little fishes and salamanders and water-beetles and the like, who are not at all accustomed to such behavior on the part of a lake. And then a few days later they are all gasping their last breaths there together on the scum-covered, waterless bottom.

But when Lagunita is really a lake, it is a very pretty one, and Mary and I love to go there and sit on the bank under the willows near the horse paddocks and watch the college boys rowing about in their graceful, narrow, long-oared shells. These swift-darting boats look like great water-skaters, only white instead of black. You know the long-legged, active water-skaters or water-striders that skim about over the surface of ponds or quiet backwater pools in streams in summer time?

So Mary and I went to Lagunita with our rake and tin lunch-pail to hunt for dragons. No shining armor; no great two-handed sword; no cap of invisibility. Just a rake and a tin lunch-pail.

"Where, Mary, do you think is the likeliest place for the dragon?" I ask.

Mary answers promptly, "There at the foot of the steep stony bank where the big willow-tree hangs over."

We go there. I grasp my rake firmly with both hands. I reach far out over the shallow water. Then I beat the rake suddenly down through the water to the bottom, and with a quick strong pull I drag it out, raking out with it a great mass of oozy mud and matted leaves. I drag this well up on shore, and both Mary and I flop down on our knees and begin pawing about in it. Suddenly Mary calls out, "I've got one," and holds up in her fingers an extraordinary, kicking, twisting creature with six legs, a big head, and a thick, ugly body on which seem to be the beginnings of several fins or wings. It has, this creature, two great staring eyes, and stout, sharp-pointed spines stick out from various parts of the body.

"Put him in the lunch-pail," I shout. I had already filled it half-full of water from the lake.

Then I found one; then Mary another, and then I still another. It was truly great sport, this dragon-hunting.

We put them all into the lunch-pail where they lay sullenly on the bottom, glaring at each other, but not offering to fight, as we rather hoped they would.

Then, what to do? These dragons in their regular lairs at the bottom of Lagunita might do a lot of most interesting things, but dredged up in this summary way and deposited in a strange tin pail in the glaring light of day, they seemed wholly indisposed to carry on any performances of dragon for our benefit. So we decided to take them home, and try to fix up for them a still smaller lakelet than Lagunita; one, say, in a tub! Then, perhaps, they would feel more at home and ease, and might do something for us.

So we took them home. And we fixed a tub with sand in the bottom, water over that, and over the top of the tub a screen of netting that would let air and sunlight in, but not dragons out. Then we collected some miscellaneous small water-beasties and a few water-plants, and put them in, and so really had a very comfortable and home-like place for the dragons. They seemed to take to it all right; we called our new lakelet Monday Pond, because of some relation between the tub and washday, I suppose, and we had very good fun with our dragons for several weeks. Think of the advantage of having your dragon right at home! If it is a bad day, or we are lazy, or there may be visitors who stay too long so there is only a little time for ourselves, how convenient it is to have a dragon--or indeed a whole brood of dragons--right in your study. Much better, of course, than to have to sail to a distant island and tramp through leagues of forest or thorny bushes or over burning desert or among spouting volcanoes to find your dragon, as most princes in fairy stories have to do.

I can't, of course, venture to tell you of all the interesting things that Mary and I saw our dragons do. Two or three will have to do. Or my publisher will cry, "Cut it short; cut it short, I say." And that will hurt me, for he is really a most forbearing publisher, and quite in the way of a friend. The three things shall be, one, eating, and what with; two, getting a new skin, and why; and third, changing from an under-water, crawling, squirmy, ugly dragon into an aerial, whizzing, flashing, dashing, beautiful-winged dragon, and when. Of course one of the most important things about any dragon is what and how he eats; and the other most important thing about Mary's and my special kind of dragon is his remarkable change. This was to us much more remarkable than having three heads or even getting a new head every time an old one is cut off, which seems to be rather a usual habit of fairy-book dragons.

The dragons lay rather quietly on the sand at the bottom of Monday Pond most of the time. Sometimes one would be up a little way on the shore, that is, the side of the tub, or clinging to one of the plant-stems. When poked with a pencil,--and we were fearless about poking them, if the pencil were a long one,--they would half-walk, half-swim away. But mostly they lay pretty well concealed, waiting for something to happen. What would happen occasionally was this: a young May-fly or a water-beetle would come swimming or walking along; if it passed an inch away from the dragon, all right; but if its path brought it closer, an extraordinary "catcher," rather like a pair of long nippers or tongs, would shoot out like a flash from the head of the dragon and seize on the unfortunate beastie. Then the "catcher" would fold up in such a way as to bring the victim against the dragon's mouth, which is provided with powerful, sharp-toothed jaws. These jaws then had their turn. And that was the end of the May-fly.

Mary was rather shocked when she saw the dragon first use its "catcher." She wanted to rescue the poor May-fly. But after all she has got pretty well used to seeing tragedies in insect life. They seem to be necessary and normal. Many insects depend upon other animals for food, just as we do. Only fortunately we don't have to catch and kill our own steer or pig or lamb or chicken. We turn the bloody business over to men who like--well, at least, who do it for us. But in the world of lower animals each one is usually his own butcher.

Mary soon wanted to see the dragon's "catcher," and so we dredged one out of Monday Pond, and put him on the study-table. As he faced us with his big eyes glaring from his broad heavy head, he looked very fierce. But curiously enough, he didn't seem to have any jaws; nor even a mouth. The whole front of his face was smooth and covered over by a sort of mask, so that his terrible jaws and catching nippers were invisible. However, we soon understood this. The mask was the folded-up "catcher" so disposed that it served, when not in use, actually to hide its own iniquity as well as that of the yawning mouth behind. Only when some small insect, all unsuspecting this smooth masked face, comes close, do the long tongs unfold, shoot out, and reveal the waiting jaws and thirsty throat. A veritable dragon indeed; sly and cruel and ever hungry for living prey.

One day when we were looking into Monday Pond, Mary saw a curious object that looked more like a hollow dragon than anything else. It had all the shape and size of one of the dragons; the legs and eyes and masked face, the pads on the back that looked like half-fledged wings. But there was a transparency and emptiness about it that was uncanny and ghost-like. Then, too, when we looked more closely there was a great rent down the back. And that made the mystery plain. The real dragon, the flesh and blood and breathing live dragon, had come out of that long tear, leaving his skin behind! It was his complete skin, too, back and sides and belly, out to the tips of his feelers and down to his toes and claws.

"But why should he shed his skin? Hasn't he any skin now?" asked Mary.

"Of course he must have a skin. How could he keep his blood in, and what would his muscles be fastened to, for he is a boneless dragon, and his skeleton is his outside shell, with his muscles fastened to it? So how could he live at all without a skin? He must have a new skin."

And, of course, that was exactly it. He had cast his old skin, as a snake does, and had got a brand-new one. Why shouldn't a dragon change his skin if a snake can?

But Mary is persistent about her "whys," and I was quite ready for her next question, which came after a moment of musing.