Cucullin fell to with a will. He finished the bacon and cabbage, picked up a loaf of the bread, and took a huge bite of it. Down came his teeth on the griddle inside.
“Thundering pancakes!” roared he. “What’s this? Here are two of my best teeth out! You call that bread, do you? You call that bread!” And he stamped about the room, howling with fury.
“Indeed, I’m sorry, sir,” said Oonagh. “I should have told you. That’s Fin’s bread that nobody else can manage but himself and the child in the cradle there. I’d not have given it to you, but you seemed a stout little fellow; and indeed since you’re bound to fight Fin, I thought you’d be scorning anything but his own food, too. Here, try this loaf. Perhaps it’ll be softer.”
Cucullin was still hungry, and besides, he was a little touched in his pride by Oonagh’s remarks about Fin’s bread. So he took the new loaf she handed him, and jammed it into his mouth, meaning this time at any rate to get a good bite out of it. Down crashed his jaw on the iron again, and up he jumped roaring.
“Take it away! Take it away!” he bellowed, twice as loud as before. “I’ll not be losing my teeth for Fin’s bread or any other. What kind of jaw has Fin got to crack—”
“Hush! Hush!” cried Oonagh. “Whatever you do, don’t be waking the child in the cradle there.... Oh, indeed, it’s too bad! There he is awake now.”
All this time Fin had been lying cramped up in the cradle. Never a move did he make, except now and then a flicker of his eyelashes just to be peering out at Cucullin sitting and eating up his bacon at the table. A terrible sight it was too: Cucullin’s great fingers as big as trees, reaching, reaching; Cucullin’s great jaws as big as millstones, crushing, crushing. Fin shut his eyes in a hurry, and his heart froze up inside him to think of fighting a giant like that. But when he heard Cucullin howling over Oonagh’s griddle-bread, he couldn’t, even for the terror in him, help a kind of smile creeping across his face. And so, when Oonagh spoke of the baby’s waking, he let out a yell almost as loud as Cucullin’s own.
Cucullin himself stopped his dancing, and turned to see what kind of child it might be that could make a noise like that.
“Boohoo! Boohoo!” howled Fin. “I’m hungry.”
“There, there!” said Oonagh. “Quiet now, my little man. Here’s some bread for you.”