Then
you were not dumb, and yet affected not to understand our language and
to speak a different one. No such creature could have existed in this
planet without having been seen, described, and canvassed. You did
not, therefore, belong to us. The story you told by signs was quickly
apprehended, and as quickly rejected as an audacious impossibility. It
was an insult to the intelligence of your hearers, and a sufficient
ground for suspecting a being of such size and physical strength of
some evil or dangerous design. The mob who first attacked you were
probably only perplexed and irritated; those who subsequently
interfered may have been animated also by scientific curiosity. You
would have been well worth anatomisation and chemical analysis. Your
mail-shirt protected you from the shock of the dragon, which was meant
to paralyse and place you at the mercy of your assailants; the metal
distributing the current, and the silken lining resisting its passage.
Still, at the moment when I interposed, you would certainly have been
destroyed but for your manoeuvre of laying hold of two of your
immediate escort.
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