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Eustace Scrubb's encounter with a dragon takes place in Chapters 6 and 7 of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, out of 13 chapters total; so it is almost literally the heart (i.e., center) of the book.  The experience is clearly life-changing for him, a spiritual transformation and reformation of his character.  But Lewis further emphasizes the significance of the encounter (even for a first-time reader) by building suspense and using poetic devices in setting the scene.  Of course, Lewis already has on his side the element of surprise, since the quest on which Eustace has unwillingly embarked does not, on its face, involve dragons.^⁠*  In fact, the only foreshadowing is in the ship’s decorations: a carved and gilded dragon encasing the ship and painted crimson dragons adorning the walls of Lucy’s cabin (Voyage 6, 18, 32).  Lewis builds suspense by bringing Eustace to a deserted valley, far from the others, and alerting him gradually to the presence of some creature.  Eustace first hears “a small noise” behind him that “sounded loud in [the] immense silence” of the valley (Voyage 83).  He freezes “dead-still where he stood for a second,” then “slewed round his neck and looked” (83).  The wording is poetic with alliteration and repeated sounds linking the words.  The phrase “sounded loud in [the] immense silence” is slow and expansive, due to the assonance and rhyme and open sounds (ou, ĕns) which can be drawn out when spoken aloud.  The phrase “dead-still where he stood for a second” repeats short, closed vowels (ĕ, ĭ, o͝o) and hard, terminal sounds (d’s and t’s) to convey a feeling that forward motion has stopped.  Eustace does not merely “turn” his head to look; his neck turns violently, as if compelled by some external force.  He then sees two thin wisps of smoke coming out of a low, dark hole at the bottom of the cliff, and some movement of the loose stones just beneath the dark hollow “just as if something were crawling in the dark behind them” (83-84).  Lewis has made this unknown “something” as sinister as possible. 

FN*: King Caspian is leading a crew of “about 30 swords if it came to fighting” (VDT, ch. 3) on a quest to sail east for one year to look for his father’s friends, the seven lost lords of Narnia, who’d been sent “off to explore the unknown Eastern Seas beyond the Lone Islands” and never came back (VDT, ch. 2).

Edition Cited: 

Lewis, C.S.  The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.  Print.