brim, and slid down on the inside, where, spreading out his lion's skin,
he proceeded to take a little repose. He had scarcely rested, until now,
since he bade farewell to the damsels on the margin of the river. The
waves dashed, with a pleasant and ringing sound, against the
circumference of the hollow cup; it rocked lightly to and fro, and the
motion was so soothing that it speedily rocked Hercules into an
agreeable slumber.

His nap had probably lasted a good while, when the cup chanced to graze
against a rock, and, in consequence, immediately resounded and
reverberated through its golden or brazen substance, a hundred times as
loudly as ever you heard a church bell. The noise awoke Hercules, who
instantly started up and gazed around him, wondering whereabouts he was.
He was not long in discovering that the cup had floated across a great
part of the sea, and was approaching the shore of what seemed to be an
island. And, on that island, what do you think he saw?

No; you will never guess it, not if you were to try fifty thousand
times! It positively appears to me that this was the most marvellous
spectacle that had ever been seen by Hercules in the whole course of his
wonderful travels and adventures. It was a greater marvel than the hydra
with nine heads, which kept growing twice as fast as they were cut off;
greater than the six-legged man monster; greater than Antæus; greater
than anything that was ever beheld by anybody, before or since the days
of Hercules, or than anything that remains to be beheld by travellers in
all time to come. It was a giant!

But such an intolerably big giant! A giant as tall as a mountain; so
vast a giant that the clouds rested about his midst, like a girdle, and
hung like a hoary beard from his chin, and flitted before his huge eyes,