poor, friendly people, who had followed the cow along with him? It seemed as if he were doomed to lose every body whom he loved, or to see them perish in one way or another. And here he was, after all his toils and troubles, in a solitary place, with not a single human being to help him build a hut,
"What shall I do?" cried he aloud. "It were better for me to have been devoured by the dragon, as my poor companions were."
"Cadmus," said a voice but whether it came from above or below him, or whether it spoke within his own breast, the young man could not tell "Cadmus, pluck out the dragon's teeth, and plant them in the earth."
This was a strange thing to do; nor was it very easy, I should imagine, to dig out all those deep-rooted fangs from the dead dragon's jaws. But Cadmus toiled and tugged, and after pounding the monstrous head almost to pieces with a great stone, he at last collected as many teeth as might have filled a bushel or two. The next thing was to plant them. This, likewise, was a tedious piece of work, especially as Cadmus was already exhausted with killing the dragon and knocking his head to pieces, and had nothing to dig the earth with, that I know of, unless it were his sword blade. Finally, however, a sufficiently large tract of ground was turned up, and sown with this new kind of seed; although half of the dragon's teeth still remained to be planted some other day.
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