The Giant who does not know when he has had Enough. {146}
{The enormous letter: p146.jpg}
One morning the post brought a truly enormous letter for Dick. It was as
broad as a table-cloth, and the address was written in letters as long as
a hoop-stick. "I seem to know that hand," said Ricardo; "but I thought
the fingers which held the pen had long been cold in death."
He opened, with his sword, the enormous letter, which was couched in the
following terms:
"The Giant as does not know when he has had _enuf_, presents his
compliments to Prince Ricardo; and I, having recovered from the
effects of our little recent _rally_, will be happy to meet you in the
old place for a return-match. I not being handy with the pen, the
Giant hopes you will excuse mistakes and bad writing."
Dick simply gazed with amazement.
"If ever I thought an enemy was killed and done for, it was that Giant,"
said he. "Why, I made mere mince-collops of him!"
However, he could not refuse a challenge, not to speak of his duty to rid
the world of so greedy and odious a tyrant. Dick, therefore, took the
usual things (which the king had secretly restored), but first he tried
them--putting on the Cap of Darkness before the glass, in which he could
not see himself. On second thoughts, he considered it unfair to take the
cap. All the other articles were in working order. Jaqueline on this
occasion followed him in the disguise of a crow, flying overhead.
On reaching the cavern--a huge tunnel in the rock--where the Giant lived,
Ricardo blew a blast on the horn which hung outside, and in obedience to
a written notice, knocked also with a mace provided by the Giant for that
purpose. Presently he heard heavy footsteps sounding along the cavern,
and the Giant came out. He was above the common height for giants, and
his whole face and body were seamed over with little red lines, crossing
each other like tartan. These were marks of encounters, in which he had
been cut to bits and come together again; for this was his peculiarity,
which made him so dangerous. If you cut off his head, he went on just as
before, only without it; and so about everything else. By dint of magic,
he could put his head on again, just as if it had been his hat, if you
gave him time enough. On the last occasion of their meeting, Ricardo had
left him in a painfully scattered condition, and thought he was done for.
But now, except that a bird had flown away with the little finger of his
left hand and one of his ears, the Giant was as comfortable as anyone
could be in his situation.
"Mornin' sir," he said to Dick, touching his forehead with his hand.
"Glad to see you looking so well. No bad feeling, I hope, on either
side?"
"None on mine, certainly," said Ricardo, holding out his hand, which the
Giant took and shook; "but Duty is Duty, and giants must go. The modern
world has no room for them."
"That's hearty," said the Giant; "I like a fellow of your kind. Now,
shall we toss for corners?"
"All right!" said Dick, calling "Heads" and winning. He took the corner
with the sun on his back and in the Giant's face. To it they went, the
Giant aiming a blow with his club that would have felled an elephant.
Dick dodged, and cut off the Giant's feet at the ankles.
"First blood for the prince!" said the Giant, coming up smiling. "Half-
minute time!"
He occupied the half-minute in placing the feet neatly beside each other,
as if they had been a pair of boots.
_Round II._--The Giant sparring for wind, Ricardo cuts him in two at the
waist.
The Giant folded his legs up neatly, like a pair of trousers, and laid
them down on a rock. He had now some difficulty in getting rapidly over
the ground, and stood mainly on the defensive, and on his waist.
_Round III._--Dick bisects the Giant. Both sides now attack him on
either hand, and the feet kick him severely.
"No kicking!" said Dick.
"Nonsense; all fair in war!" said the Giant.
But do not let us pursue this sanguinary encounter in all its _horrible
details_.
Let us also remember--otherwise the scene would be too painful for an
elegant mind to contemplate with entertainment--that the Giant was in
excellent training, and thought no more of a few wounds than you do of a
crack on the leg from a cricket-ball. He well deserved the title given
him by the Fancy, of "The Giant who does not Know when he has had
Enough."
* * * * *
The contest was over; Dick was resting on a rock. The lists were strewn
with interesting but imperfect fragments of the Giant, when a set of
double teeth of enormous size flew up out of the ground and caught
Ricardo by the throat! In vain he strove to separate the teeth, when the
crow, stooping from the heavens, became the Princess Jaqueline, and
changed Dick into a wren--a tiny bird, so small that he easily flew out
of the jaws of the Giant and winged his way to a tree, whence he watched
the scene.
But the poor Princess Jaqueline!
To perform the feat of changing Dick into a bird she had, of course,
according to all the laws of magic, to resume her own natural form!
There she stood, a beautiful, trembling maiden, her hands crossed on her
bosom, entirely at the mercy of the Giant!
No sooner had Dick escaped than the monster began to _collect himself_;
and before Jaqueline could muster strength to run away or summon to her
aid the lessons of the Fairy Paribanou, the Giant who never Knew when he
had Enough was himself again. A boy might have climbed up a tree (for
giants are no tree-climbers, any more than the grizzly bear), but
Jaqueline could not climb. She merely stood, pale and trembling. She
had saved Dick, but at an enormous sacrifice, for the sword and the Seven-
league Boots were lying on the trampled grass. He had not brought the
Cap of Darkness, and, in the shape of a wren, of course he could not
carry away the other articles. Dick was rescued, that was all, and the
Princess Jaqueline had sacrificed herself to her love for him.
The Giant picked himself up and pulled himself together, as we said, and
then approached Jaqueline in a very civil way, for a person of his
breeding, head in hand.
"Let me introduce myself," he said, and mentioned his name and titles.
"May I ask what _you_ are doing here, and how you came?"
{"Let me introduce myself," he said: p154.jpg}
Poor Jaqueline threw herself at his feet, and murmured a short and not
very intelligible account of herself.
"I don't understand," said the Giant, replacing his head on his
shoulders. "What to do with you, I'm sure I don't know. '_Please don't
eat me_,' did you say? Why, what do you take me for? I'm not in that
line at all; low, _I_ call it!"
Jaqueline was somewhat comforted at these words, dropped out of the
Giant's lips from a considerable height.
"But they call you 'The Giant who does not Know when he has had Enough,'"
said Jaqueline.
"And proud of the title: not enough of fighting. Of _punishment_ I am a
glutton, or so my friends are pleased to say. A brace of oxen, a drove
of sheep or two, are enough for me," the Giant went on complacently, but
forgetting to mention that the sheep and the oxen were the property of
other people. "Where am I to put you till your friends come and pay your
ransom?" the Giant asked again, and stared at Jaqueline in a perplexed
way. "I can't take you home with me, that is out of the question. I
have a little woman of my own, and she's not very fond of other ladies;
especially, she would like to poison them that have good looks."
Now Jaqueline saw that the Giant, big as he was, courageous too, was
afraid of his wife!
"I'll tell you what I'll do; I'll hand you over to a neighbour of mine,
who is a bachelor."
"A bachelor giant; would that be quite proper?" said Jaqueline, trying to
humour him.
"He's not a giant, bless you; he's a queer fellow, it is not easy to say
what he is. He's the Earthquaker, him as shakes the earth now and then,
and brings the houses about people's ears."
Jaqueline fairly screamed at hearing this awful news.
"Hush! be quiet, do!" said the Giant. "You'll bring out my little woman,
and she is not easy to satisfy with explanations when she finds me
conversing with a lady unbeknown to her. The Earthquaker won't do you
any harm; it's only for safe keeping I'll put you with him. Why, he
don't waken, not once in fifty years. He's quite the dormouse. Turns on
his bed now and then, and things upstairs get upset, more or less; but,
as a rule, a child could play with him. Come on!"
Then, taking Jaqueline up on one hand, on which she sat as if on a chair,
he crossed a few ranges of mountains in as many strides. In front was
one tall blue hill, with a flattened peak, and as they drew near the
princess felt a curious kind of wind coming round her and round her. You
have heard of whirlpools in water; well, this was just like a whirlpool
of air. Even the Giant himself could hardly keep his legs against it;
then he tossed Jaqueline up, and the airy whirlpool seized her and
carried her, as if on a tide of water, always round and round in
narrowing circles, till she was sucked down into the hollow hill. Even
as she went, she seemed to remember the hill, as if she had dreamed about
it, and the shape and colour of the country. But presently she sank
softly on to a couch, in a beautifully-lighted rocky hall. All around
her the floor was of white and red marble, but on one side it seemed to
end in black nothing.
Jaqueline, after a few moments, recovered her senses fully, and changing
herself into an eagle, tried to fly up and out. But as soon as she was
in the funnel, the whirlpool of air always sucking down and down, was too
strong for her wings. She was a prisoner in this great gleaming hall,
ending in black nothingness. So she resumed her usual form, and walking
to the edge of the darkness, found that it was not empty air, but
something black, soft, and strong--something living. It had no form or
shape, or none that she could make out; but it pulsed with a heart.
Jaqueline placed her foot on this curious thing, when a voice came, like
thunder heard through a feather-bed:
"Not near time to get up yet!" and then there was a snore, and the great
hall rocked like a ship at sea.
It was the Earthquaker!
The habits of this monstrous animal are very little known, as, of course,
he never comes above ground, or at least very seldom, when he makes
tracks like a dry river-bed across country. We are certain that there
_are_ Earthquakers, otherwise how can we account for earthquakes? But
how to tackle an Earthquaker, how to get at him, and what to do with him
when you have got at him, are questions which might puzzle even King
Prigio.
It was not easy to have the better of an enchantress like Jaqueline and a
prince like Ricardo. In no ordinary circumstances could they have been
baffled and defeated; but now it must be admitted that they were in a
very trying and alarming situation, especially the princess. The worst
of it was, that as Jaqueline sat and thought and thought, she began to
remember that she was back in her own country. The hills were those she
used to see from her father's palace windows when she was a child. And
she remembered with horror that once a year her people used to send a
beautiful girl to the Earthquaker, by way of keeping him quiet, as you
shall hear presently. And now she heard light footsteps and a sound of
weeping, and lo! a great troop of pretty girls passed, sweeping in and
out of the halls in a kind of procession, and looking unhappy and lost.
Jaqueline ran to them.
"Where am I? who are you?" she cried, in the language of her own country,
which came back to her on a sudden.
"We are nurses of the Earthquaker," they said. "Our duty is to sing him
asleep, and every year he must have a new song; and every year a new
maiden must be sent down from earth, with a new sleepy song she has
learned from the priests of Manoa, the City of the Sun. Are you the new
singer?"
"No, I'm _not_," said Jaqueline. "I don't know the priests of Manoa; I
don't know any new sleepy song. I only want to find the way out."
"There is no way, or we should have found it," said one of the maidens;
"and, if you are the wrong girl, by the day after to-morrow they must
send the right one, otherwise the Earthquaker will waken, and shake the
world, and destroy Manoa, the City of the Sun." Then they all wept
softly in the stillness. "Can we get anything to eat here?" asked poor
Jaqueline, at last.
She was beginning to be very hungry, and however alarmed she might be,
she felt that dinner would not be unwelcome. The tallest of the maidens
clapped her hands, and immediately a long table was spread by unseen
sprites with meringues and cold chicken, and several sorts of delicious
ices.
We shall desert Jaqueline, who was rather less alarmed when she found
that she was not to be starved, at all events, and return to Prince
Ricardo, whom we left fluttering about as a little golden-crested wren.
He followed the Giant and Jaqueline into the whirlpool of air as far as
he dared, and when he saw her vanish down the cone of the hill, he flew
straight back to Pantouflia.