II
The Giants’ Ship
Part One: How the Giants Went Exploring
After the earth was newly washed by the Flood, nearly all the land of Europe lay flat and green under the sun. Except in one far corner there was not a mountain nor a valley nor a hill nor a hollow, nor so much as a little stream. The soft young grass stretched away and away, in a wide meadow, as far as one could see.
But there was nobody there to look. For all the people there were, lived in the Up-and-Down Country, on a great forked point in the Far North. And that was a very different kind of place, with mountains that went up and valleys that went down, cliffs that rose and cascades that fell, and not so much flat land as a giant could cover with his pocket-handkerchief.
But the giant Wind-and-Weather, who lived there, did not mind that in the least. He sat quite placidly on a mountain-top and looked through a kind of glass that he had, out over the sea. As for his wife, the giantess Sun-and-Sea, nothing bothered her. She sat on a cliff and wove on a kind of loom that she had, back and forth, back and forth, with a noise like the long ocean rollers on a fair day.
Playing Follow-the-Leader down the long row of peaks
When it came to the children, they never sat at all. Like the country, they were always going up or down,—sliding down the mountains, scrambling up the waterfalls, or playing Follow-the-Leader, hoppety-skip, skippety-hop, straight down the long row of peaks that made their home.
And when they all played together, it made rather a good game. For there were fourteen of them, sturdy youngsters, each over a mile high, and growing fifty feet or so every day. Then too, they happened in the jolliest way, for they came in pairs so that every one had his twin. There were Handsig and Grandsig, Kildarg and Hildarg, Besseld and Hesseld, Holdwig and Voldwig, Grünweg and Brünweg, Bratzen and Gratzen, Mutzen and Putzen,—a boy and a girl, a boy and a girl, a boy and a girl, straight down through.
Now, one morning, with Handsig ahead and Putzen straggling somewhere behind, they were all playing Follow-the-Leader, rather harder than usual. Handsig had rolled down peaks, and wriggled up, hopped on one foot and jumped on two, turned somersaults and splashed through waterfalls. And the whole line of them had come rolling, wriggling, hopping, jumping, tumbling, splashing after. Being put to it for something to do next, Handsig started on the dead run from peak to peak, straight along the mountain-tops.