As for the queen, as soon as she saw how things were turning out, she ran to the pantry and set the four-and-twenty dairy maids to putting up a lunch for Jack. “For,” said she, “he may be gone a year and a day, and I don’t want my son to go hungry.”
So Jack chose a good stout staff for a walking stick, slung his lunch across his back, and set off for the ends of the earth. His father and mother watched from the palace tower till his green feather was lost to sight behind the hills.
All day long Jack walked up hill and down, in and out, by field and farm, through market and town, past castle and cottage. And everywhere he stopped to ask his way. But the queer part was that though every one had heard of the ends of the earth, no one could tell him just where they lay. There was no scholar who had ever seen them on a map and no traveler who had been so far.
Jack set off for the ends of the earth
“Oh, yes,” people would say wisely and nod their heads, “the ends of the earth! Every one has heard of them, of course, but just where they are or how you would go to get there, that I can’t say.”
So Jack kept on for a week and a month, knocking and knocking at all the house doors, without finding any one to tell him the way. And every day his lunch grew smaller, his shoes grew thinner, and his feather which had stood up so fine and straight, drooped more and more. But his heart inside him beat as happy and as high as on the morning he said good-by to his father and his mother. And he whistled so cheerily that the housewives would smile as he passed, and say, “There’s a brave lad coming home from a journey.”
Everywhere he stopped to ask his way
Late one afternoon Jack found himself on a wide, sandy plain that stretched as far as he could see. There were no house doors at which to knock and no travelers of whom to inquire the way. It was quite lonely and still. Ahead on the far horizon inky turrets appeared against the setting sun. They belonged to a castle standing alone upon a high rock. Beyond it was only sky. The sand seemed to reach the cliff, and stop in a sudden firm line. The hope and joy in Jack almost choked him. What could this be but the ends of the earth and the castle of the giant Riverrath?