Now Zebedee Nabbum listened with profound attention to Little Jacket's story, and pondered and pondered over it.
"And after all," he said to himself, "why shouldn't it be true? Don't we read in Scripter that there war giants once? Then why hadn't there ought to be some on 'em left--in some of them remote islands whar nobody never was? Grimminy! If it should be true--if we should find Jacky's island--if we should see the big critter alive, or his wife--if we could slip a noose under his legs and throw him down--or carry along the great net and trap him while he war down on the beach arter his clams, and manage to tie him and carry him off in my ship! He'd kick, I know. He'd a kind o' roar and struggle, and maybe swamp the biggest raft we could make to fetch him. But couldn't we starve him into submission? Or, if we gave him plenty of clams, couldn't we keep him quiet? Or couldn't we give the critter
Rum?
--I guess he don't know nothin' of ardent sperets--and obfusticate his wits--and get him reglar boozy--couldn't we do any thing we chose to, then? An't it worth tryin', any how? If we
could
catch him, and get him to Ameriky alive, or only his skeleton, my fortune's made, I cal'late. I kind o' can't think that young fellow's been a gullin' me. He talks as though he'd seen the awful big critters with his own eyes. So do the other six fellows--they couldn't all of 'em have been dreamin'."
So Zebedee had a conversation one day with the Captain of the Nancy Johnson, and found out from him that he had taken the latitude and longitude of the coast where they took away the shipwrecked sailors. The Captain also described to Zebedee the appearance of the coast; and, in short, Zebedee contrived to get all the information about the place the Captain could give him, without letting it appear that he had any other motive in asking questions than mere curiosity.