As it walked its forearms waved and fluttered, and I saw descending from them what seemed like vast folded leathern wings, which shook and swayed in the air at every step.

Its pace was about as fast as that of a man, and it moved with ease and lightness.

It seemed like some enormous bat, or rather like a winged crocodile, or yet again like one of those monstrous dragons of which I had read, but in whose actual existence I had never believed.

Yet here I saw one living and moving before me--an actual dragon, with the exception of a tail; for that appendage, which plays so great a part in all the pictures of dragons, had no place here.

This beast had but a short caudal appendage, and all its terrors lay in its jaws and in its wings.
For a moment I stood almost lifeless with terror and surprise.