All this time, he was fully convinced that the leaden balls and the big stones hurled from the artillery were so many flies.
GARGANTUA DESTROYS THE CASTLE.
Giants are always very hard-headed, and sometimes as simple as they are hard-headed. Ponocrates, who knew better than that, told him what it was that was falling around him. Then, for the first time, Gargantua got really mad. He raised his big tree in proper position, and, turning the head of his Mare well towards the Castle, rushed furiously against the walls, tearing down all the towers and buttresses, and laying them in ruins on the ground. Not one of all those in the Castle, who had been laughing and making Gargantua their target from the ramparts, escaped. Paying no more attention to the ruins he went on to the mill-bridge, and found all the Ford, swollen by the rain, covered over with corpses, and in such number that the dead bodies had actually caused the water of the mill to stop running. Standing on the bank the party waited a bit, not at all liking to ride over dead men. That skipping monkey, Gymnaste, was the first to cross. He loudly swore that his horse was afraid of nothing, and that at home the beast never could get his feed without first stepping over a stuffed body, always put for that purpose in his way.
This satisfied the others, who soon crossed after Gymnaste, and Gargantua and his great Mare slowly followed, last of all.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
HOW GARGANTUA COMBED CANNON-BALLS OUT OF HIS HAIR, AND HOW HE ATE SIX PILGRIMS IN A SALAD BEFORE SUPPER.
Grandgousier's Palace was not far from the Ford. In a very short time after leaving the river Gargantua galloped into the court-yard, where he was joyfully welcomed by the old King himself. You may imagine how he laughed, and then cried, and then laughed once more, loud and long, over his big son, for whom he had been so anxiously waiting. But the laughter lived after the tears. A queer thing happened after everybody had got comfortably seated. Gargantua, feeling a little warm after his ride, had already washed himself and put on some clean clothes, for he had learned to be a neat man ever since Ponocrates had given him that mysterious dose. He was now combing his thick hair, in a lazy sort of a way, with his own comb, which had been specially made in Africa for the young Prince on his tenth birthday. It was very large,—larger, in fact, than any comb that had ever before passed through a Giant's hair. Each tooth was an elephant's tusk, taken just as it had stood in the elephant's jaw. Every time Gargantua passed the comb through his locks, half a dozen of those balls which had stuck there when he was going through the wood of Vede would drop on the floor with a clattering noise.