Just now I was pursued in the village of Anis by doughty labourers armed with flails and scythes and pitchforks.

I had to drop the hens and rabbits, put my tail under my arm, and run as fast as I could.

Now I ask you, is it seemly for a dragon of Cappadocia to run away like a robber with his tail under his arm?
Further, incommoded as I was by crests, horns, hooks, claws, and scales, I barely escaped a brute who ran half an inch of his pitchfork into my left thigh." As he said this he carefully ran his hand over the insulted part, and, after giving himself up for a few moments to bitter meditation: "What idiots those Penguins are! I am tired of blowing flames in the faces of such imbeciles.

Orberosia, do you hear me ?" Having thus spoken the hero raised his terrible helmet in his hands and gazed at it for a long time in gloomy silence.

Then he pronounced these rapid words: "I have made this helmet with my own hands in the shape of a fish's head, covering it with the skin of a seal.