wanted to know. The Old One was an inhabitant of the sea, you must
recollect, and roamed about everywhere, like other sea-faring people.
Of course, he had often heard of the fame of Hercules, and of the
wonderful things that he was constantly performing, in various parts of
the earth, and how determined he always was to accomplish whatever he
undertook. He therefore made no more attempts to escape, but told the
hero how to find the garden of the Hesperides, and likewise warned him
of many difficulties which must be overcome, before he could arrive
thither.

"You must go on, thus and thus," said the Old Man of the Sea, after
taking the points of the compass, "till you come in sight of a very tall
giant, who holds the sky on his shoulders. And the giant, if he happens
to be in the humor, will tell you exactly where the garden of the
Hesperides lies."

"And if the giant happens not to be in the humor," remarked Hercules,
balancing his club on the tip of his finger, "perhaps I shall find means
to persuade him!"

Thanking the Old Man of the Sea, and begging his pardon for having
squeezed him so roughly, the hero resumed his journey. He met with a
great many strange adventures, which would be well worth your hearing,
if I had leisure to narrate them as minutely as they deserve.

It was in this journey, if I mistake not, that he encountered a
prodigious giant, who was so wonderfully contrived by nature, that,
every time he touched the earth, he became ten times as strong as ever
he had been before. His name was Antreus. You may see, plainly enough,
that it was a very difficult business to fight with such a fellow; for,