Tom was so badly hurt that he fell down as if dead. His coat was torn and his hand was bleeding. After a moment, he struggled to his feet and fled out of the yard, away from such terrible enemies. In front of the yard, the Godmother's woolly-haired dog, Rover, was running about. Without seeing Tom he stepped on him with his great, hard foot. When Tom cried out in pain, Rover stopped, turned around and smelled at Tom with his moist nose. Little Tom was overcome with another great fear. He was dusty, bruised and bleeding and so unhappy that he did not know what to do. He ran on, stumbling and limping, while Rover, thinking he was some strange insect, ran after him, barking and jumping around him, until he drove him to the brook. Little Tom wanted to hide himself among the leaves near the water; but, as he stepped on them, he slipped and fell head first into the brook. The water refreshed him and, knowing how to swim very well, he was at first pleased to think he had escaped this enemy; but the brook, which seemed to him a river, was carrying him away. He had no idea that he could reach the shore. He already felt himself lost, believing that the waves would dash him against a stone, when, suddenly, a trout came out of the water and gobbled him up in his great mouth. But the trout did not like this morsel and spat him out again into the grass under the bridge. [Illustration] Catching hold of a grass stem, Tom pulled himself into the bushes and sat there, shaking as with a chill. Wet through and cold, with hands bruised and bleeding, he could hardly hold himself on the grass which the wind waved back and forth. As he became weaker and weaker and was about to give up hope that he would ever come of his adventure alive, he suddenly heard his Godmother calling to him. She was coming across the little foot-bridge and calling loudly, so that she might not by mistake step on him. Tom immediately answered as loud as he could shout, »Here I am Godmother. Here I am«. But she had to look a long while before she discovered whence came the thin, little voice. Then she promptly rescued him from his perilous position. Poor Little Tom was so worn out from his bruises and his tremendous exertion, that he could hardly feel anything and it was only after he had eaten well and drunk some milk, that he could tell his Godmother about all the terrible adventures that had befallen him. How in the deep forest of the grain he had been ensnared by the terrible robber in his frightful net; how the great, yellow ostriches had pursued him and, when he was escaping from them, how a rough, hairy dragon had come upon him and chased him into the river, where he was first swallowed by an enormous whale and then cast out upon the shore.