"Let us in, let us in," shrieked the wind. "We're very, very hungry."

Out in the blackness and way out to sea the storm was so wild and the waves so gigantic that they disturbed the sleep of a couple of very ancient Sea Dragons indeed.

The first Dragon was averagely enormous, about the size of a largeish cliff.

The second Dragon was gobsmackingly vast.

He was that Monster mentioned earlier in this story, the great Beast who had been sleeping off his

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Roman picnic for the past six centuries or so, the one who had recently been drifting into a lighter sleep.

The great storm lifted both Dragons gently from the seabed like a couple of sleeping babies, and washed them on the swell of one indescribably enormous wave onto the Long Beach, outside Hiccup's village.

And there they stayed, sleeping peacefully, while the wind shrieked horribly all around them like wild Viking ghosts having a loud party in Valhalla, until the storm blew itself out and the sun came up on a beach full of Dragon and very little else.

The first Dragon was enough to give you nightmares.

The second Dragon was enough to give your nightmares nightmares.

Imagine an animal about twenty times as large as a Tyrannosaurus Rex. More like a mountain than a living creature -- a great, glistening, evil mountain. He was so encrusted with barnacles he looked like he was wearing a kind of jeweled armor but, where the little crustaceans and the coral couldn't get a grip, in the joints and crannies of

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him, you could see his true color. A glorious, dark green, it was the color of the ocean itself.

He was awake now, and he had coughed up the last thing he had eaten, the Standard of the Eighth Legion, with its pathetic ribbons still flying bravely. He was using it as a toothpick and the eagle was proving very useful for teasing out those irritating little pieces of flesh that get stuck between your twenty-foot back teeth.

The first person to discover the Dragons was Badbreath the Gruff, who set out very early to check how his nets had fared in the storm.

He took one look at the beach, rushed to the Chief's house, and woke him up.

"We have a problem," said Badbreath.

"What do you mean, A PROBLEM?" snapped Stoick the Vast.

Stoick had not slept at all. He had lain awake worrying. What kind of father didput his precious Laws before the life of his son? But then what kind of son would fail the precious Laws that his father had looked up to and believed in all his life?

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By morning Stoick had made the awesome decision that he was going to reverse the solemn pronouncement he had made on the beach, and un-banish Hiccup and the other boys. "It is WEAK of me, WEAK," said Stoick to himself, gloomily. "Squid-face the Terrible would have banished his son in the twinkling of an eye. Loudmouth the Gouty would have positively enjoyed it. What is the matterwith me? I should be banished myself, and no doubt that is what Mogadon the Meathead is going to suggest."

All in all, Stoick was not in a state to deal with any more problems.

"There are a couple of humungous Dragons on the Long Beach," said Badbreath.

"Tell them to go away," said Stoick.

"Youtell them," said Badbreath.

Stoick stomped off to the beach. He returned again looking very thoughtful.

"Did you tell them?" asked Badbreath.

"Tell IT," said Stoick. "The larger Dragon has eaten the smaller one. I didn't like to interrupt. I think I shall call a Council of War."

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The Hooligans and the Meatheads woke that morning to the terrible sound of the Big Drums summoning them to a Council of War, only used in times of dreadful crisis.

Hiccup awoke with a start. He had hardly slept at all. Toothless, who had crept into bed with Hiccup the night before, was nowhere to be seen and the bed was stone cold, so he had obviously been gone for some time.

Hiccup dragged his clothes on hurriedly. They had dried overnight, and were so stiff with salt that it was like putting on a shirt and leggings made out of wood. He wasn't sure what he was meant to do, as this was the morning he was supposed to go into exile. He followed everybody else to the Great Hall. The Meatheads had spent the night there anyway, because it had not been the weather for camping.

On the way he bumped into Fishlegs. He looked as if he had slept as badly as Hiccup. His glasses were on crooked.

"What's happening?" asked Hiccup. Fishlegs shrugged his shoulders.

"Where's Horrorcow?" asked Hiccup. Fishlegs shrugged his shoulders again.

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Hiccup looked around at the crowd pushing its way toward the Great Hall and noticed that there was not a domestic dragon to be seen. Normally they were never far from their Masters' heels and shoulders, yapping and snarling and sneering at each

other. There was something faintly sinister about their disappearance. . . .

Nobody else had noticed. There was a tremendous babble of excitement, and such a crush of enormous Vikings that not everybody could get in to the Great Hall, and there was a big jumble of barbarians shouting and shoving outside.

Stoick called for silence.

"I have called you here today," boomed Stoick, "because we have a problem on our hands. A rather large Dragon is sitting on the Long Beach."

The crowd was deeply unimpressed. They were hoping for a more important crisis.

Mogadon voiced the general disapproval.

"The Big Drums are only used in times of ghastly deadly peril," said Mogadon in amazement. "You have summoned us here at a horribly early hour" (Mogadon had not slept well, on the stone floor of the Great Hall with only his helmet for a pillow), "just because of a

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DRAGON? I do hope you are not losing your grip, Stoick," he sneered, hoping that he was.

"This is no ordinary Dragon," said Stoick. "This Dragon is HUGE. Enormous. Gobsmackingly vast. I've never seen anything like it. This is more of a mountain than a Dragon."

Not having seenthe Dragon-mountain, the Vikings remained unimpressed. They were used to bossing dragons about.

"The Dragon," said Stoick, "must of course be moved. But it is a very big Dragon. What should we do, Old Wrinkly? You're the thinker in the tribe."

"You flatter me, Stoick," said Old Wrinkly, who seemed rather amused by the whole thing. "It's a Sea-dragonus Giganticus Maximus, and a particularly big one, I'd say. Very cruel, very intelligent, ravenous appetite. But my field is Early Icelandic Poetry, not large reptiles. Professor Yobbish is the Viking expert on the subject of dragons. Perhaps you should consult his book on the subject."

"Of course!" said Stoick. "How to Train Your Dragon,wasn't it? I do believe that Gobber burgled that very book from the Meathead Public Library. ..." He gave a naughty look at Mogadon the Meathead.

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"This is an outrage!" boomed Mogadon. "That book is Meathead property. ... I demand its instant return or I shall declare war on the spot."

"Oh, put a sock in it, Mogadon," said Stoick. "With wimpy librarians like yours, what can you expect?"

The Hairy Scary Librarian blushed a delicate pink and shook in his size eighteen shoes.

"Baggybum, hand me the book from the fireplace," yelled Stoick.

Baggybum stretched out one of his great octopus arms and picked the book off the shelf. He lobbed it across the heads of the crowd and Stoick caught it, to much cheering. Morale was high. Stoick bowed to the hordes and handed the book to Gobber.