The Dragon's Eye

by Dugald A. Steer

  Still, the crew of the Sea Snake kept firing and turning the boat back towards us again and again. No doubt they would have scored an ace eventually had we not had another stroke of luck. For at that moment the sea serpent rose in front of the ship, taking a harpoon shot that was headed straight for Dr. Drake. The sea serpent shook with rage. Captain Hezekiah grabbed the rope, pulled the harpoon back in on its line, and took careful aim. This time, he was aiming directly at me.

  “Good riddance!” he shouted.

  But before Captain Hezekiah could release the harpoon, I felt something wet and rubbery around my waist. It was the tip of the sea serpent’s tail. It lifted me high out of the water in a huge arc and deposited me on the beach. Then Beatrice was lifted up and set down next to me.

  Finally the sea serpent turned to where Dr. Drake had been trying to swim, but he was nowhere to be seen. The serpent’s tail disappeared under the water for a moment, then reappeared, gripping Dr. Drake tightly around his waist, and deposited him, spluttering and choking, on the shore.

  Now the sea serpent turned its full attention to the ship. The crew stopped firing as Captain Hezekiah ordered them to pile on all the sail they could, but they didn’t stand a hope of outrunning the monster. My last view of the Sea Snake was of the serpent looping its namesake with several gigantic coils. It seemed that Captain Hezekiah was to go down like Ahab in Moby-Dick. And good riddance, I thought.

  “Well, this is a rum situation and no mistake,” said Dr. Drake as we stood, dripping, on the shore underneath the cliffs.

  “At least we are alive,” said Beatrice. “Is this Cornwall?”

  “Yes,” said Dr. Drake. “We must make our way up to the top of these cliffs at once. St. Austell is not far. We can find an inn there where we can dry out. I shall send a telegraph to Emery so that he can send us some money, since we have lost all of our things. I am devastated that we have lost the dragon dust.”

  But at that moment, the serpent’s tail swung back over the beach, holding the box of dragon dust, which it placed neatly on a rock. Then it disappeared again. Dr. Drake grinned broadly and picked it up.

  “At least some things are going our way,” he said.

  We started up a winding path that led up from the beach to the cliff top. I noticed that the dawn could not be far off. At least climbing warmed me up a little.

  “Did Captain Hezekiah know about us?” I asked.

  “I don’t think he did,” said Dr. Drake. “What worries me more is the whereabouts of Ignatius Crook. I would guess that he is still trying to find the right location to call the sea serpent. But if he is anywhere close, he may well have seen the commotion back there.”

  “Do you think we’re safe for now?” asked Beatrice.

  Just then, I could have sworn I saw what seemed to be a very small blue dragon fly out from behind a rock above us and then fly back again. It had beady little eyes and looked at us meanly.

  “I am afraid not,” said a loud, harsh voice. A large, roughly dressed man carrying a nasty-looking cudgel suddenly stepped out from behind a rock, barring our way. As he did so, he flipped open his coat for a moment, so that we could clearly see that he was carrying a pistol.

  Another man, who was also carrying a stout cudgel, stepped out behind us. After looking around to make sure we were really alone, the first man calmly took out his pistol and pointed it at Dr. Drake.

  At that, the man we had seen in the pub doorway opposite Dr. Drake’s shop calmly stepped from his hiding place and smiled at us. The small, wicked-looking dragon was sitting on his shoulder like a parrot, baring its teeth.

  “My dear Dr. Drake,” he said, “this is a nice surprise.”

  “What do you want, Ignatius?” said Dr. Drake.

  “You know what I want,” said Ignatius Crook. “Just don’t do anything ill advised. I think I’ll take that.” And he reached out and took the box of dragon dust from Dr. Drake.

  “You’re a beast!” said Beatrice, glaring at him.

  At that, Ignatius reached up and prodded his pet dragon, which leapt from his shoulder, made a beeline for Beatrice, and gave her a nasty nip on the arm.

  “Hey!” she called.

  “Perhaps that will teach you that children should be seen and not heard?” said Ignatius. “See if he’s got anything else useful, would you?”

  One of the men grinned and began searching Dr. Drake’s dripping pockets. But all they contained were a watch, which did not seem to be working, a pencil, a compass, some loose coins, and a small whistle in the shape of a dragon’s head.

  “Give that to me,” said Ignatius.

  “Why?” said the man. “I found it.”

  “I wouldn’t blow on it if I were you,” said Dr. Drake as the man held it aloft. Then he put it to his lips and blew out a shrill note that reminded me of the sound Scorcher made after Dr. Drake had fed him. It was obviously a dragon whistle.

  “I said give it to me, you fool,” said Ignatius.

  He glanced up at the sky, took the whistle, and put it in his own pocket.

  “Tie them up,” he said.

  After the men tied us up, Ignatius led us up the cliff path. We soon found ourselves among the ruins of some old towers and open pits. I had read about Cornwall in my encyclopaedia and guessed this must be the site of a tin mine. Above one of the pits was a mining crane with a rope attached to a winch.

  “Are you sure this is going to work?” asked the man with the pistol. He was still pointing it at Dr. Drake. “I’d rather just bump them all on the head and then push them into a pit.”

  “I’m not paying you to ask questions,” said Ignatius “I’m paying you to do what I say and keep quiet. That pit is a bucca hole. I even found a rhyme about it in your diary, Doctor. It goes:

  Drop them in one by one,

  And one by one they’ll go.

  A good feed’s what the bucca needs,

  And they will do just so!”

  As Ignatius sang the rhyme, a savage gleam lit up in his eye. When he had finished, the man said, “Well, I don’t like it, but you’re the boss. You’re quite sure there’s something down there? I wouldn’t want them to be able to identify us.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Ignatius. “Listen!”

  And he picked up a pebble and tossed it into the hole.

  After a moment a series of loud, angry noises, like a cross between the grunt of a dragon and the thudding of a huge hammer, came out of the hole. They were going to throw us in there? Now I was shivering with fear.

  “Can’t you hear the bucca knocking?” said Ignatius.

  “What’s a bucca?” asked Beatrice.

  “Oh, it is a type of dragon, my dear,” said Ignatius. “And not a very nice type. Not like Flitz here.” He paused and stroked his pet, which grunted contentedly. “Dr. Drake has told you all about dragons, hasn’t he? Big wings, huge claws, sharp teeth, terrible flames. These ones live in tin mines. But I won’t say too much about them. That would spoil the surprise. You are going to meet one very soon indeed.”

  “But we haven’t done anything to hurt you,” I said.

  “That’s very nice of you,” said Ignatius. “Throw them in!”

  The men attached the ropes binding our hands to another rope, which they fastened onto the crane. Then, using the winch, they pulled us up.

  “Ow!” said Beatrice.

  “Help!” I shouted. But there was no one else about.

  “Surely you will listen to reason?” said Dr. Drake as we swung perilously above the gaping pit.

  Ignatius smiled.

  He swept at the rope with a knife. It cut through. And we fell headlong into the bucca hole.

  We landed in a heap at the bottom. I was on top of Dr. Drake, and Beatrice was on top of me. It was so dark I couldn’t see much, but I was sure that I heard something large hastening away into the darkness.

  “Is everyone all right?” said Beatrice after a while.

  “Well — ah — I think I’m all right,” whispered
Dr. Drake. He was out of breath. He had landed rather heavily to break our fall.

  “Where is the bucca?” I asked.

  I had expected to see a lot of skulls and bones from the previous victims, but in the dark all I could see was a vague sheen of ore running along the stone walls and a few fish bones. Dr. Drake managed to cut through the rope by rubbing it on a sharp piece of stone he had landed on, and we slowly began to disentangle ourselves and get up.

  “Shh!” said Dr. Drake. “Not quite so loud. We don’t want Ignatius to hear us. I am afraid that it seems that he doesn’t know very much about buccas.”

  “How is that?” asked Beatrice.

  “Well, it’s typical of him really. I expect that all he has done is found out that there is a legend about a terrible, man-eating bucca in this hole, and decided that it is all true. He never did manage to separate dragon legend from dragon science. And he obviously hasn’t bothered to find out the full facts in my diary.”

  “So there is no bucca, then?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, there is certainly a bucca,” said Dr. Drake. “It’s just not dangerous — that’s all. In fact, buccas are extremely timid. A bucca makes that knocking sound when it is trying to escape. But Ignatius is right about one thing — the bucca is a type of dragon. Most legends cast them in the role of some kind of goblin or fairy.”

  “So how do we get out?” asked Beatrice.

  “Well,” said Dr. Drake, “first we have to convince Ignatius and his hired ruffians that we are not coming out. So I want you to scream and shout as though you are being attacked by a bucca, then go absolutely quiet.”

  Even though we were in a pretty grim situation, both Beatrice and I had to do our utmost to stop ourselves from laughing out loud as we howled and screamed and generally tried to sound as though we were being eaten alive by a bucca. Dr. Drake joined in, and so did the poor, frightened bucca itself, which set up a terrible roaring and knocking. After a while, we stopped, but the knocking from the frightened bucca continued.

  “Now,” whispered Dr. Drake, “I hope that sounded convincing enough. You both died beautifully. But we must find our way out.”

  “How do we do that?” I asked.

  “Didn’t I teach you anything at all at Castle Drake?” he said. “I might not always be around when there are dragons about.”

  I looked round the hole. Now that my eyes had adjusted to the dim light, I could see that the floor was covered in fish bones. There were also some very clear tracks that seemed as though they disappeared straight into the wall.

  “There!” said Beatrice, pointing at them.

  “Good,” said Dr. Drake. “Now follow them.”

  “But . . .” I began.

  “Just follow them,” he said.

  Beatrice and I followed the tracks up to the wall. Beatrice touched it, and it crumbled away at once, revealing a passage that must have once been one of the old mine workings. The knocking sound grew louder.

  “It’s an old bucca trick,” said Dr. Drake. “They try to hide by covering up the entrance to their hole. But they are too stupid to wipe away their tracks.”

  We squeezed into the low passageway and crawled along it until we came to a fork. I began heading down the left-hand passage, away from the knocking sound, but Dr. Drake pulled me back.

  “Let’s follow the bucca,” he said.

  And so we crawled up the other passageway, which soon opened up enough so that we could stand up. There was a shaft above our heads that was too high to reach, but it let in some light. We followed the passage as it gradually rose up and up. The knocking sound grew louder and louder until suddenly we came upon the bucca itself.

  It took one look at us with a pair of enormous eyes and turned in panic to the sheer wall at the end of the passage. In some ways, the bucca did not seem very different from Weasel, except that it was of a sandy colour with a shorter tail and had a large bony projection on the top of its head, which it was using to dig into the wall. That was where the knocking sound had been coming from. Suddenly, it broke through the wall at the end of the tunnel and disappeared in a shower of sand and dirt. As it did so, light flooded in.

  “Well,” said Dr. Drake, “this may not be the time to say it, but you are extremely privileged. I do not know of anyone else alive who has ever gotten that close to a bucca before. When we get back, I shall expect a full report. But now we must leave this place by the door the bucca has made. Keep quiet until I can be sure the coast is clear.”

  So, after a short, sandy crawl, we found ourselves back near the ruins of the tin mine. Dr. Drake went ahead of us, then he came back to report that there was now no sign of Ignatius or the other ruffians.

  “There is only one thing that puzzles me,” said Dr. Drake, gazing up at the sky.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “My dragon whistle did not seem to work,” he said.

  “Are we sure?” asked Beatrice, pointing to some large tracks right next to the hole that Ignatius had thrown us into.

  It was only a few miles into the town of St. Austell. Dr. Drake immediately checked us into some rooms in a hotel and set off to send a telegram to Emery. He came back with a fresh change of clothes for each of us.

  “We must get to Bodmin as soon as possible,” he said. “We shall stay here tonight, for you two need to eat, rest, and get thoroughly dried out, so I have arranged for a coach to take us there first thing in the morning.”

  The town of Bodmin is said to have been founded a great many years ago by a Cornish saint named Petroc. According to Dr. Drake, Saint Petroc, who was also the founder of Padstow — or Petroc’s Stowe, as it was originally known — was one of the earliest dragonologists to live in this country. One legend tells of him banishing a fearsome dragon named Tregeagle and another tells of his great kindness to a dragon with a splinter in its eye. Until recent times, water from a well in the grounds of Saint Petroc’s church was said to have the power of curing all sorts of eye complaints and, of course, Saint Petroc’s healing chalice was listed among the twelve treasures of the Secret and Ancient Society.

  As we set off through the town, Dr. Drake said, “I’m sure I don’t need to mention that we must be very careful here not to run into Ignatius or Alexandra or, indeed, both of them.”

  “But why would Ignatius come here?” I asked.

  “There is every reason to suppose that Ignatius has found the clue about Ebenezer’s grave in my diary. Although I failed to understand the clue, I’m guessing that he and Alexandra will at least come here to check it out.”

  “Where is the grave?” I asked.

  “It is in Saint Petroc’s churchyard,” said Dr. Drake. “We are going there now.”

  When we arrived, the churchyard was empty except for a gardener who was working in the far corner. We went in and began to search around for a gravestone bearing the name Ebenezer Crook. Although we must have looked over every gravestone at least twice, there did not seem to be any sign of his at all.

  “I am quite sure that he was buried in this churchyard,” said Dr. Drake.

  Beatrice and I went to ask the gardener if he knew where Ebenezer Crook was buried. He was tending a grave that did not yet seem to have a stone.

  “Are you relatives?” he asked. “For if not, I must ask you why you are interested in Mr. Crook. And if you are, then I must ask you to prepare yourselves for a shock.”

  “We are the children of two of his friends from London,” Beatrice explained, waving Dr. Drake over.

  “There has been a terrible business here,” said gardener, shaking his head. “I know some people in this town did not like Ebenezer Crook, and many liked his son Ignatius even less. They said that Ebenezer had strange interests not fit for Bodmin folk. There were a number of people who said that the words on his gravestone were more than a little strange. The truth of it is that his son returned to the town yesterday and his father’s gravestone was stolen last night. What is worse is that there was a fire at his house. I
t was completely destroyed, and now there is no sign of young Mr. Crook anywhere. It would seem that he must have perished in the blaze, although there is no sign of a body. That is strange, too.”

  “Are the police investigating the matter?” asked Dr. Drake.

  “I should say so,” said the man. “They are going round the town now. I expect you will be able to prove where you were last night?” And he raised his eyebrows.

  “Indeed,” said Dr. Drake. “We have just arrived from St. Austell. But can you tell me which one was his grave?”

  “It is this very one I am trying to tidy up here,” said the man.

  “Thank you,” said Dr. Drake. “I don’t suppose you remember the words that were on his gravestone?”

  “I don’t, I’m afraid,” said the gardener. “There is one person who might be able to help. Mr. Patterson, the local stonemason, cut the words into the stone. If anyone could remember them, it would be him.”

  He told us how to find Mr. Patterson’s house.

  As we left the graveyard, Beatrice said, “Do you think Ignatius took the stone?”

  “It certainly seems likely,” said Dr. Drake.

  “And what about his father’s house?” I asked.

  “Much as I would love to go and look at it, I don’t think we’re going to find anything there apart from a lot of policemen.”

  “Do you think Ignatius would have survived, then?”

  “If they have not found a body, then I think it is very likely.”

  When we arrived at Mr. Patterson’s workshop, we found that he too was out, but his wife, who offered us some tea and sandwiches, was able to help us.

  “It’s a strange business,” she said. “No one round here liked Ignatius Crook much. He owed people money, and he had a nasty, bullying way about him. But the theft of the gravestone and the burning of his father’s house coupled with his sudden appearance and disappearance have given people a lot to talk about. Old Mrs. Hopkins said that she thought she saw streaks of fire coming from the sky just before the house burnt down. But she says all sorts of things. Perhaps it was a warning. Or perhaps Ignatius really did have some kind of — communion — with strange beasts.”