By the book I’ll point the path
To the home of Riverrath!”
And with that the giant picked Jack up and carried him down a corridor echoing like deep chimes, into a vast room all of bronze. The ceiling, the walls, the table, the chairs, flashed back the firelight like a hundred sunsets. The giant set Jack on the bronze table.
“I’m glad to see you, Jack,” he said, “for I haven’t seen a man before for three hundred years.”
“Why,” cried Jack, “that’s just what your brother said.” And he told the giant all about his visit to the great iron castle.
When he had finished, the giant’s good-natured face grew sober. “Strange,” he said, “that the ends of the earth weren’t down on my brother’s map, when you hear of them every day or so. But I’ll tell you what, Jack: if any one has ever been there, my book will say so, for that has the whole history of the world written down in it. Only if I get that out, you’ll have to stay all night, for it will take me that long to read it through.”
Jack thanked him, and the giant took four or five fine brown pigs from a spit and piled them up on a platter. He and Jack had a merry supper. When the giant talked, his voice echoed about the bronze room as if a hundred great bells were ringing; and when Jack answered, it was like a hundred little bells tinkling back again.
After supper, the giant put on his big bronze-bowed spectacles, and opened his tremendous book at page one. For a while Jack stood on the table beside him and tried to read too. But the lines were so long and so big that before he had finished the first one he had fallen fast asleep.
In the morning when Jack woke up, the giant was just putting the book away again on its shelf. “Jack,” said he, “I’m afraid I’m no more help to you than my brother. For I’ve read through every line and every word of the whole book, and I can’t find that anybody has ever been to the ends of the earth. There is plenty of talk about going, but no one seems ever to get there at all.”
“Never mind,” said Jack, “and thank you kindly.” But he couldn’t help looking a bit downhearted for all he spoke so bravely.