CHAP.II.
How St. George killed the burning Dragon in Egypt, and
redeemed Sabrine the King’s Daughter from death.
How he was betrayed by Almidor the black King of
Morocco, and sent unto the Sultan of Persia, where he
remained seven years in prison.
THE valiant St George, having left the other six Champions, as you have heard, after some few months travel, arrived within the Egyptian territories, which country was at that time annoyed with a burning dragon, whose hunger, if it were not every day appeased with the body of a true virgin, he would breathe forth such a stench from his nostrils, as Infected the whole country with a horrible plague, which for four end twenty years together continued, till there was not one virgin left but the King’s Daughter only, and she ready next day to be offered up in sacrifice to him, if the dragon in the mean time was not destroyed: wherefore the King, her father, proclaimed, that whosoever would combat with the dragon, and preserve his daughter’s life, in renown thereof should have her to wife, and the crown of Egypt after his decease; all which was made known to St. George, by a hermit of that country; whereupon he resolved to undertake the adventure, and lodging with the hermit that night, the next morning mounting his steed, he took his journey to a valley, whither the King’s Daughter was leading by sage matrons to be made a prey to the dragon’s jaws, whom our English Knight accosting, returning her back to her father, promised to kill that enemy of Egypt’s health, or lose his life in the encounter, and so, like a bold adventurous knight, rode to the place where the dragon had his residence. This horrible dragon, whose monstrous proportion would have frightened any body but only St. George, as soon as she beheld him, wallowed from her hideous den, and gave him a fierce assault with her wings and tail, who nimbly avoided her fury, gave her such a
