At once the big kind animal trimmed in his sail and before long they entered a beautiful bay whose dark waters were dotted with the white sails of the fisher boats, and directly in front, climbing up to the sky, a high mountain on which stood a castle, where from a tall tower all night long shone a light that could hardly be told from the stars around it.
Mary Louise jumped from the boat to the beach, and then turned to wave good-by to the Polar Bear as he sailed away to the North Pole.
Nearby sat an old fisherman on a bench mending his net.
"Hello, little girl," he said, as Mary Louise hesitated. "Moor your little hulk 'longside o' me an' I'll spin you a yarn!"
Then he began to tell how, many hundred years ago, all the land around about was covered with a thick forest instead of the deep blue water of the bay.
Then came the great giant Cormoran, who was 18 feet high and 3 yards wide, and his wife Cormelian, who was just as big, and they brought from the hills great gray rocks which they piled up, one on the other, hundreds of feet high, until they had made a mountain. And on the top of this they built their castle, where they lived until the giant's wife died and was buried under the Chapel rock.
Then Jack the Giant Killer climbed up the mountain, and after a hard fight Cormoran was killed, and there were no more giants in the land.
Next came the Small People, who cut down most of the forest, and built cottages for themselves, ploughed the fields and made gardens.
But one day a great enchanter came that way, and his strange dress and long gray beard frightened the women and children, and they shut their doors in his face whenever he asked for a drink, for he had walked far and was tired and thirsty.
At last he found the principal man of the Small People, a little old crusty fellow and very miserly. And when the great enchanter asked him for a drink of water, the Small Man told him he didn't keep a hotel for beggars. And this made the great enchanter so angry that he struck the ground with his staff, so that it made a deep hole, and then he went upon his journey.