Chapter 17 IN THE MO?TH OF THE DRAGON

Hiccup fell into the Dragon's mouth, and its teeth snapped shut behind him like prison doors.

He was falling through complete darkness, surrounded by a smell so awful it was suffocating.

He jerked to a sudden halt as the back of his shirt caught on something and held.

Hiccup hung there in the darkness, swaying gently. By a thousand-to-one chance his shirt had caught on a spear still stuck in the Dragon's throat since his Roman banquet. Hiccup's foot brushed against the wall of what he presumed was the Dragon's throat. The Dragon's digestive juices stung like acid, and he snatched his foot away.

Above him, Hiccup could hear the Dragon's great tongue sloshing and lunging about his mouth, trying to find Hiccup so he could crunch him to death... . He hadn't intended to swallow him whole.

A disgusting river of green goo dripped down the puffy red insides of the Dragon's throat. ?ust across from where Hiccup was hanging, greeny-yellow steam was puffing out of two small holes in the slimy wall. ?very now and then a small explosion sent little flickers of flame shooting out of the holes.

How interesting, thought Hiccup, who was strangely calm, because he couldn't quite believe that this was really happening. Those must be where the fire comes from.

Viking biologists had wondered for years where the fire that dragons breathed came from. Some said the lungs, others the stomach. Hiccup was the first to discover the fire-holes, which are too small to see with the naked eye in a normal-sized dragon.

Way down below him, Hiccup could hear the distant rumbling of singing from the Dragon's previous meal. A Seadragonus Giganticus obviously takes a long time to digest, thought Hiccup.

It was indeed still going strong:

Humans can be bland, but if you have some salt to hand, A little bit of brine, will make them taste div-I-I-I-ne... .

The spear was gradually bending over with Hiccup's weight. It was only a matter of time before it broke and he fell to join the breezy optimist in the stomach below... .

What was worse, the fumes and the heat and the smell were starting to confuse Hiccup so that he no longer really CAR?D. The terrible noise of the Dragon's heart beating had entered into Hiccup's chest and forced his own heart to follow the same rhythm.

A Dragon has to live, after all, he found himself thinking. And then he remembered the Dragon's words to him as he stood on the cliff top:

"You'll find that you come round to my point of view once you're inside me...."

Oh no! thought Hiccup. The Dragon's digestion! It's already working!

"I need to live, I need to live," he repeated to himself, over and over again, trying desperately to block out the Dragon's thoughts.

There was a horrible creaking noise as the stout Roman spear began to split in two... .