All of a sudden he stopped short. Ahead of him were no more mountains, only a straight drop thousands of feet to the sea. He had come, before he knew it, to the end of the Up-and-Down Country. But that was not what made Handsig stop so quickly. He had been to the end of the land before. It was something beyond the water that attracted him,—another country so different from his that at first it did not seem to be land at all. There was no up or down in it. It stretched flat and green as far as he could see.
Handsig waved his arms and shouted, “Oh, Kildarg, Hildarg, Besseld, Hesseld, see the nice, green running-place!”
And all the other children, thinking it was still part of the game, waved their arms and shouted, “Oh, Kildarg, Hildarg, Besseld, Hesseld, see the nice, green running-place.”
By that time Handsig had no doubt any longer. Without another word he plunged headforemost into the sea, and swam with all his might straight for the wide meadow that was the rest of Europe.
Splash! Splash! Splash! The other children dived after, and puffing, blowing, kicking, raced across the channel. Then hand in hand, fourteen in a row, they scampered pell-mell down across the plain where Germany is to-day.
But with swimming so hard and running so fast, poor Putzen was quite out of breath. It was so strange, too, to be going along on a level. It did not pitch one forward; it did not hold one back. It was just the same—just the same, step after step after step. The twenty-six legs beside Putzen did not stop for a minute; they beat along faster and faster. Putzen hung on to Mutzen as best she could, but her legs would not go and her breath would not come. And so, gasping and plunging, she sprawled headlong, pulling Mutzen after her.
Mutzen dragged down Gratzen, and Gratzen dragged down Bratzen; and so they all tumbled till the land for miles around was a mass of upturned turf and sprawling giant children. Then Bratzen wailed, and Gratzen wailed; and Mutzen and Putzen who were at the bottom of the whole pile, wailed loudest of all; and the air was so full of large sounds that it seemed likely to burst.
Now, Grandsig, who felt responsible as the oldest girl of the family, started to scramble up to quiet Mutzen and Putzen. As she did so, her hands dug into the soft, moist earth, and scratched up two good-sized hills. A happy idea struck her. “Kildarg! Hildarg!” she cried. “Look!” And she burrowed into the earth again, scooping up handful after handful.
Kildarg sat up and wiped his eyes. Hildarg sat up and wiped her eyes. Then they both began to dig as if their lives depended on it. In a twinkling, there were no more giant children piled on top of Mutzen and Putzen; and twenty-eight giant hands were scooping out valleys and piling up mountains of earth.
Handsig and Grandsig made big mountains; Mutzen and Putzen made little ones. Every single giant child piled up a whole range higher than he was himself. Then, when all of them were done, there was such a patting and a pounding as never was heard before, as the valleys were smoothed, and the mountains molded into shape. There were sharp peaks and blunt peaks, smooth peaks and rough peaks, single peaks, double peaks, triple peaks. As for the valleys, they were of all sorts,—straight and crooked, wide and narrow, long and short.