“I’ll tell you what,” cried the giant; “there’s still a chance some one might know how to get there. And if any one does, it will be my brother who lives nine hundred miles from here. For he is master of all the birds of the air.”
So the giant took Jack outside, and whistled loud enough to be heard nine hundred miles. And then at every step Jack took he went the length of ten. So in scarcely a week’s time Jack found himself at noonday before a great golden castle glittering in the sunshine. He knocked with his staff on the high gate; and a giant with golden hair and eyes as blue and gleaming as the noonday sky, came to see who was there.
“Good day,” said Jack politely. “Could you tell me the way to the ends of the earth and the castle of giant Riverrath?”
The giant beamed all over his great happy face, till his eyes and his cheeks and his wide mouth were full of sunny smiles. He swung open the gate, and cried:
“Flip-flap, flip-flap,
Here’s a cheery, chary chap;
From the birds I’ll ask the path
To the home of Riverrath!”
And with that he picked Jack up and carried him through a shining corridor, up hundreds and hundreds of high golden stairs till they came out on a dazzling turret far up against the sky. The giant set Jack down on the wide parapet. “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 brothers said.” And he told the giant all about his visits to the iron castle and the bronze.