e Princess, I suppose,' said Philip; 'well, _she's_ all right
anyway.'

Then the procession went back to the fort, and then the dragon awoke.
Philip could see the great creature stretching itself and shaking its
vast head as a dog does when it comes out of the water.

'I expect it doesn't like the fireworks,' said Philip. And he was quite
right.

And now the dragon saw the Princess who had been placed at a convenient
spot about half-way between the ruins and Philip's tower.

It threw up its snout and uttered a devastating howl, and Philip felt
with a thrill of horror that, clockwork or no clockwork, the brute was
alive, and desperately dangerous.

And now it had perceived that it was bound. With great heavings and
throes, with snortings and bellowings, with scratchings and tearings of
its great claws and lashings of its terrible tail, it writhed and
fought to be free, and the light of thousands of fireworks illuminated
the gigantic struggle.

Then what Philip had known would happen, did happen. The great wall held
fast, the rope held fast, the dragon held fast. It was the key that gave
way. With an echoing grinding rusty sound like a goods train shunting on
a siding, the key was drawn from the keyhole in the dragon's side and
left still fast to its rope like an anchor to a cable.

_Left._ For now that happened which Philip had not foreseen. He had
forgotten that before it fell asleep the dragon had partly wound itself
up. And its struggles had not used up all the winding. There was go in
the dragon yet. And with a yell of fury it set off across the plain,
wriggling its green rattling length towards--the Princess.

And now there was no time to think whether one was afraid or not. Philip
went down those tower stairs more quickly than he had ever gone down
stairs in his life, and he was not bad at stairs even at ordinary times.

He put his sword over his shoulder as you do a gun, and ran. Like the
dragon he made straight for the Princess. And now it was a race between
him and the dragon. Philip ran and ran. His heart thumped, his feet had
that leaden feeling that comes in nightmares. He felt as if he were
dying.

Keep on, keep on, faster, faster, you mustn't stop. Ah! that's better.
He has got his second wind. He is going faster. And the dragon, or is it
fancy? is going not quite so fast.

How he did it Philip never knew. But with a last spurt he reached the
pillar where the Princess stood bound. And the drago