In the above-described warfare, if a Pygmy chanced to pluck out
a crane's tail feather, it proved a very great feather in his
cap. Once or twice, if you will believe me, a little man was
made chief ruler of the nation for no other merit in the world
than bringing home such a feather.

But I have now said enough to let you see what a gallant little
people these were, and how happily they and their forefathers,
for nobody knows how many generations, had lived with the
immeasurable Giant Antaeus. In the remaining part of the story,
I shall tell you of a far more astonishing battle than any that
was fought between the Pygmies and the cranes.

One day the mighty Antaeus was lolling at full length among his
little friends. His pine-tree walking stick lay on the ground,
close by his side. His head was in one part of the kingdom, and
his feet extended across the boundaries of another part; and he
was taking whatever comfort he could get, while the Pygmies
scrambled over him, and peeped into his cavernous mouth, and
played among his hair. Sometimes, for a minute or two, the
Giant dropped asleep, and snored like the rush of a whirlwind.
During one of these little bits of slumber, a Pygmy chanced to
climb upon his shoulder, and took a view around the horizon, as
from the summit of a hill; and he beheld something, a long way
off, which made him rub the bright specks of his eyes, and look
sharper than before. At first he mistook it for a mountain, and
wondered how it had grown up so suddenly out of the earth. But
soon he saw the mountain move. As it came nearer and nearer,
what should it turn out to be but a human shape, not so big as
Antaeus, it is true, although a very enormous figure, in