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 Antreus;
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, so that be could neither see Hercules nor the golden cup in which
he was voyaging. And, most wonderful of all, the giant held up his
great hands and appeared to support the sky, which, so far as Hercules
could discern through the clouds, was resting upon his head! This does
really seem almost too much to believe.

Meanwhile, the bright cup continued to float onward, and finally touched
the strand. Just then a breeze wafted away the clouds from before the
giant's visage, and Hercules beheld it, with all its enormous features;
eyes each of them as big as yonder lake, a nose a mile Long, and a mouth
of the same width. It was a countenance terrible from its enormity of