With a wild Indian whoop he sprang on the dragon's back, and all the other boys followed his example, except little Adolf who was timid and began to set up a howl for his mother, I'm sorry to say. No sooner were the boys on his back than the dragon set off at a fine trot up and down the Dragon's Gorge, they had to hold on tight and to duck whenever the rock projected overhead, or when they went sharply round a corner.
"Hurrah," cried Helmut waving a flag, "this is better than a motor ride. Isn't he a jolly old fellow?"
At this remark the jolly old fellow stopped dead and began to snort out fire and smoke, that made the boys cough and choke.
"Now stop that, will you!" said Helmut imperatively, "or we shall have to slay you after all, that's what we came out for you know." He pointed his gun at the head of the dragon as he spoke like a real hero.
The dragon began to tremble, and though they could only see his profile, they thought he turned pale.
"Where's that other little boy?" he asked in a hollow voice. "If you will give him to me for my dinner, I will spare you all."
Helmut laughed scornfully, "Thanks, old fellow," he said--"you're very kind, I'm sure Adolf would be much obliged to you. I expect he's run home to his mother long ago; he's a bit of a funk, we shan't take him with us another time."
"He looked so sweet and juicy and tender," said the dragon sighing, "I never get a child for dinner nowadays! Woe is me," he sniffed.
"You are an old cannibal," said the boys horrified, and mistaking the meaning of the word cannibal. "Hurry up now and give us another ride, it's first-rate fun this!"
The 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.