The Hobbit

smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to
     spare!”
    But Bilbo was not quite so unlearned in dragon-lore as all that, and if Smaug hoped to get him to come nearer so easily he
     was disappointed. “No thank you, O Smaug the Tremendous!” he replied.
    “I did not come for presents. I only wished to have a look at you and see if you were truly as great as tales say. I did not
     believe them.”
    “Do you now?” said the dragon somewhat flattered, even though he did not believe a word of it.
    “Truly songs and tales fall utterly short of the reality, O Smaug the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities,” replied Bilbo.
    “You have nice manners for a thief and a liar,” said the dragon. “You seem familiar with my name, but I don’t seem to remember
     smelling you before. Who are you and where do you come from, may I ask?”
    “You may indeed! I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air. I am
     he that walks unseen.”
    “So I can well believe,” said Smaug, “but that is hardly your usual name.”
    “I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number.”
    “Lovely titles!” sneered the dragon. “But lucky numbers don’t always come off.”
    “I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a
     bag, but no bag went over me.”
    “These don’t sound so creditable,” scoffed Smaug. “I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer;
     and I am Barrel-rider,” went on Bilbo beginning to be pleased with his riddling.
    “That’s better!” said Smaug. “But don’t let your imagination run away with you!”
    This of course is the way to talk to dragons, if you don’t want to reveal your proper name (which is wise), and don’t want
     to infuriate them by a flat refusal (which is also very wise). No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of
     wasting time trying to understand it. There was a lot here which Smaug did not understand at all (though I expect you do,
     since you know all about Bilbo’s adventures to which he was referring), but he thought he understood enough, and he chuckled
     in his wicked inside.
    “I thought so last night,” he smiled to himself. “Lake-men, some nasty scheme of those miserable tub-trading Lake-men, or
     I’m a lizard. I haven’t been down that way for an age and an age; but I will soon alter that!”
    “Very well, O Barrel-rider!” he said aloud. “Maybe Barrel was your pony’s name; and maybe not, though it was fat enough. You
     may walk unseen, but you did not walk all the way. Let me tell you I ate six ponies last night and I shall catch and eat all
     the others before long. In return for the excellent meal I will give you one piece of advice for your good: don’t have more
     to do with dwarves than you can help!”
    “Dwarves!” said Bilbo in pretended surprise. “Don’t talk to me!” said Smaug. “I know the smell (and taste) of dwarf—no one
     better. Don’t tell me that I can eat a dwarf-ridden pony and not know it! You’ll come to a bad end, if you go with such friends,
     Thief Barrel-rider. I don’t mind if you go back and tell them so from me.” But he did not tell Bilbo that there was one smell
     he could not make out at all, hobbit-smell; it was quite outside his experience and puzzled him mightily.
    “I suppose you got a fair price for that cup last night?” he went on. “Come now, did you? Nothing at all! Well, that’s just
     like them. And I suppose they are skulking outside, and your job is to do all the dangerous work and get what you can when
     I’m not looking—for them? And you will get a fair share? Don’t you believe it! If you get off alive, you will be lucky.”
    Bilbo was now beginning to feel really uncomfortable. Whenever Smaug’s roving eye, seeking for him in the shadows, flashed
     across him, he trembled, and an unaccountable desire seized hold of him to rush out and reveal himself and tell all the truth
     to Smaug. In fact he was in grievous danger of coming under the dragon-spell. But plucking up courage he spoke again.
    “You don’t know everything, O Smaug the Mighty,” said he. “Not gold alone brought us hither.”
    “Ha! Ha! You admit the ‘us’” laughed Smaug. “Why not say ‘us fourteen’ and be done with it,