"In the sky, of course. You really ask very stupid questions. He lives
in a cloud-cave. And when he comes out of it he breathes fire, and
sometimes water. If he is breathing fire you will be burnt up, but if
it is only water, you will easily be able to catch some in a little
bottle. What else do you want?"
For Wang Chih still lingered at the mouth of the cave.
"I want a pair of wings to fly with, and a bottle to catch the water
in," he replied boldly.
So they gave him a little bottle; and before he had time to say "Thank
you!" a white crane came sailing past, and lighted on the ground close
to the cave.
"The crane will take you wherever you like," said the old men. "Go
now, and leave us in peace."
So Wang Chih sat on the white crane's back, and was taken up, and up,
and up through the sky to the cloud-cave where the sky-dragon lived.
And the dragon had the head of a camel, the horns of a deer, the eyes
of a rabbit, the ears of a cow and the claws of a hawk.
Besides this, he had whiskers and a beard, and in his beard was a
bright pearl.
All these things show that he was a real, genuine dragon, and if you
ever meet a dragon who is not exactly like this, you will know he is
only a make-believe one.
Wang Chih felt rather frightened when he perceived the cave in the
distance, and if it had not been for the thought of seeing his wife
again, and his little boy and girl, he would have been glad to turn
back.
While he was far away the cloud-cave looked like a dark hole in the
midst of a soft, white, woolly mass, such as one sees in the sky on an
April day; but as he came nearer he found the cloud was as hard as a
rock, and covered with a kind of dry, white grass.
When he got there, he sat down on a tuft of grass near the cave, and
considered what he should do next.
The first thing was, of course, to bring the dragon out, and the next
to make him breathe water instead of fire.
"I have it!" cried Wang Chih at last; and he nodded his head so many
times that the white crane expected to see it fall off.
He struck a light, and set the grass on fire, and it was so dry that
the flames spread all around the entrance to the cave, and made such a
smoke and crackling that the sky-dragon put his head out to see what
was the matter.
"Ho! ho!" cried the dragon, when he saw what Wang Chih had done, "I
can soon put this to rights." And he breathed once, and the water came
out his nose and mouth in three streams.
But this was not enough to put the fire out. Then he breathed twice,
and the water came out in three mighty rivers, and Wang Chih, who had
taken care to fill his bottle when the first stream began to flow,
sailed away on the white crane's back as fast as he could, to escape
being drowned.
The rivers poured over the cloud rock, until there was not a spark
left alight, and rushed down through the sky into the sea below.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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