They were talking about the dragon and how their chances were not that great. Bilbo got a bad feeling about where all of this was heading when Kíli spoke up.
"And you forget that we have a Wizard in our company! Gandalf will have killed hundreds of dragons in his time!"
"Oh no, no, I wouldn't say…" Gandalf objected.
"How many, then?" Dori asked.
"What?"
"Well, how many dragons have you killed?" Dori went on.
Gandalf could only cough as he choked on the smoke of his pipe.
"Go on, give us a number!" Dori continued, sparking an argument between all the dwarves.
Bilbo tried to calm them down, but it was to no avail until Thorin got up and shouted for them to shut it.
"If we have read these signs, do you not think that others have read them, too?" the dwarf king asked, still standing. "Rumours have begun to spread. The dragon Smaug has not been seen for sixty years?"
Bilbo tuned out the rest of the speech.
While every one of the dwarves was cheering, Bilbo frowned. He shared a look with Gandalf who knew as well as Bilbo did that sometimes dragons could sleep for decades, if not hundreds of years, while still being very much alive.
"Sorry to interrupt," the hobbit said, "but what are you going to do if the dragon is still alive?"
"Have you not listened?" Thorin asked. "That creature has not been seen in sixty years."
"The last dragon I met hadn't been seen in over a hundred, but he was still very much alive and he was pissed for being disturbed in his slumber," Bilbo said condescendingly.
"Ah, I believe this is the time to say why I chose Master Baggins to be our fourteenth member," Gandalf said, while all the dwarves stared at the hobbit, dumbfounded. "In contrast to me, Bilbo here has already killed three dragons."
"Please, Gandalf, it's not as if I killed any of them on purpose," Bilbo said, shaking his head. "All were accidents."
"You killed three dragons on accident?" Balin asked as he was the first to get his wits about him again.
"Well, it was on three separate occasions that I ran into them and somehow they all ended up dead. It's not my fault that I seem to be ill-fated."
"Well, laddie, how did you kill them then?" Balin asked, very interested in that explanation, and all the others leaned closer as well, still not believing that this little creature had been able to kill not only one, but three dragons.
"Well, honestly, I was running from all three of them. The first, well, that was just bad luck. You see, I was visiting this castle up in the north and the dragon must have thought that I was a thief, because suddenly it was following me and chasing me across the roof of the castle. It was night and raining…" Bilbo trailed off, seeing that all the dwarves were hanging on his lips, eagerly following the tale and expecting some great heroic end to it, "the dragon slipped on the wet roof and impaled himself on the iron fence that surrounded that part of the castle."
Bilbo could see that none of the dwarves had expected that, since all were sitting there and staring at him with open mouths.
"And the second one, laddie?" Dwalin asked, no doubt hoping for a heroic story this time.
"Well, that one is actually a funny story. There was this dragon far in the south. I met him on another of my travels with Gandalf. Actually, I have no idea where it came from. I was travelling alone for a while, minding my own business, when this great beast just appeared above me, trying to eat me. I ran for it, doing my best to evade it, when I stepped on a shovel that someone had left lying on the field I was crossing. It flew up and straight into the drake's mouth, and then suddenly the beast plummeted down from the sky, dead."
Again, none of the dwarves seemed satisfied with the end of the tale.
"And the third?" Dori asked. "Gandalf said there were three of them."
"Well, this time I was in a cave to the north-east, again minding my own business, you see. I had no idea that the cave was inhabited, much less by a dragon, but then suddenly it was there, thinking I was a thief, when I had just been looking around at all the stuff lying in that cave. I ran for it, again, only this time I stumbled and crashed into a mirror. A moment later, the dragon fell over, dead. I have no idea why, though," Bilbo ended his tales.
"Well, I'm sure that it does not matter why. What does matter is that dragons seem to have a habit of dropping dead with you around and I think this will be a good thing to have on this quest," Gandalf said and all the dwarves nodded, even if some only reluctantly.
Many moons later, Bilbo faced Smaug the Terrible. This time he talked a bit to the dragon, hoping to dissuade it from trying to kill him, but it was to no avail. There was nothing left for Bilbo, but to run again.
While doing that, he stumbled and the Arkenstone that he had been holding in his hand, as well as the One Ring on his finger, flew out of their places and into Smaug's open muzzle as the dragon was just about to breath fire onto the poor hobbit.
It turned out that dragon fire could melt the One Ring, even if it exploded, still in Smaug's airway, obliterating the dragon and Arkenstone. The company of Thorin Oakenshield lived happily ever after this, since both Gundabad and Dol Guldur imploded, killing legions of orcs and goblins and Thorin did not fall into the gold-madness without the Arkenstone in his vicinity.