"What's all this?" he cried, and staring about him as if he expected another Giant.
At that moment the twenty thousand archers twanged their bow strings and the arrows came whizzing like so many mosquitoes. Hercules gazed around, for he hardly felt the arrows. At last, looking narrowly at the ground, he espied the Pygmies at his feet. He stooped down and taking up the nearest one between his thumb and finger, set him on the palm of his left hand and looked at him.
"Who in the world, my little fellow, are you?" Hercules asked.
"I am your enemy," answered the Pygmy. "You have slain the Giant, Antaeus, our brother by our mother's side, and we are determined to put you to death."
Hercules was so amused by the Pygmy's big words and warlike gestures that he burst into laughter and almost dropped the poor little mite of a creature off his hand.
"Upon my word," he said, "I thought I had seen wonders before to-day, hydras with many heads, three headed dogs, and giants with furnaces in their stomachs, but you outdo them all. Your body, my little friend, is about the size of an ordinary man's finger. Pray, how big may your soul be?"
"As big as your own," said the Pygmy.
Hercules was amazed at the little man's courage, and so he left the Pygmies, one and all, in their own country, building their little houses, waging their little warfare with the cranes, and doing their little business whatever it might have been.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] By permission of and special arrangement with the Houghton Mifflin Co.