by boat and to look for them at the door whenever their larder was
empty, even as a man looketh for a snipe in a marsh; but how, said
Alderic, if a snipe should sit in the top of a tree, and would men
find him there? Assuredly never! So Alderic decided to swim the river
and not to go by the door, but to pick his way into the tower through
the stone. Moreover, it was in his mind to work below the level of the
ocean, the river (as Homer knew) that girdles the world, so that as
soon as he made a hole in the wall the water should pour in,
confounding the Gibbelins, and flooding the cellars, rumoured to be
twenty feet in depth, and therein he would dive for emeralds as a
diver dives for pearls.

And on the day that I tell of he galloped away from his home
scattering largesse of gold, as I have said, and passed through many
kingdoms, the dragon snapping at maidens as he went, but being unable
to eat them because of the bit in his mouth, and earning no gentler
reward than a spurthrust where he was softest. And so they came to the
swart arboreal precipice of the unpassable forest. The dragon rose at
it with a rattle of wings. Many a farmer near the edge of the worlds
saw him up there where yet the twilight lingered, a faint, black,
wavering line; and mistaking him for a row of geese going inland from
the ocean, went into their houses cheerily rubbing their hands and
saying that winter was coming, and that we should soon have snow. Soon
even there the twilight faded away, and when they descended at the
edge of the world it was night and the moon was shining. Ocean, the
ancient river, narrow and shallow there, flowed by and made no murmur.
Whether the Gibbelins banqueted or whether they watched by the door,
they also made no murmur. And Alderic dismounted and took his armour
off, and saying one prayer to his lady, swam with his pickaxe. He did
not part from his sword, for fear that he meet with a Gibbelin. Landed