Laughing loudly, the other Giants fell back a short distance, where the wine and victuals had been left, carrying their little King along with them. They had hardly got there when the cunning Panurge and his friends, putting on a most humble, miserable look, crawled up, saying:—
"We surrender, good comrades. We have no taste for war. All we ask is to join with you in feasting while our masters are fighting."
The poor little King was willing; the Giants were willing; and so they began to feast, Panurge and the others along with them.
Loupgarou had, by this time, advanced upon Pantagruel, with a fearful mace of steel, weighing nine hundred and seventy thousand pounds. At the end of the mace there were thirteen diamond points, the very smallest of which was as big as the largest bell of the Nôtre Dâme, in Paris. But what made that mace so terrible was, that it was formed of fairy steel, so that it had only to touch the strongest thing in the world to break it into pieces. But Pantagruel, as we know, put his faith in God alone. As every good Christian, when he sees a fearful enemy near him, calls upon God, so Pantagruel prayed to Him, while Loupgarou was cursing furiously, to aid him who had always loved the Church and obeyed the Ten Commandments. He had scarcely ended his prayer when he heard a voice from the sky, saying: "Have faith, and thou shall gain the victory."
By this time, Loupgarou, with his mouth wide open, was drawing near him, and Pantagruel, who had no enchanted weapon, but only his mast, thought to frighten the monster by crying out, as the old Lacedæmonians used to do, in his most awful tones: "Thou diest, rascal! Thou diest!" Even while he was saying this, he was digging his big hands into the ship which he carried at his waist, from which he took more than eighteen kegs and four bushels of salt, which he threw, filling Loupgarou's mouth, throat, nose, and eyes. This only made Loupgarou rage worse than ever. Roaring with pain and anger, he rushed against Pantagruel, thinking to break his skull with his fairy mace. Pantagruel, luckily, was both quick of foot and keen of eye. Seeing what Loupgarou was at, he stepped with his left foot back one pace; but even then he was not so quick as to save the ship. Loupgarou's blow fell upon its prow, which was enough to smash it into four thousand and eighty-six pieces, scattering, of course, the rest of the salt along the ground.
THE FIGHT WITH LOUPGAROU.
When Pantagruel saw his good ship all in pieces he did not despair, but gallantly attacked Loupgarou with its mast, striking him two blows; one fell above the breast, the other between neck and shoulders. The monster did not relish such treatment. So, when Pantagruel wanted to give another blow in the same sharp style, Loupgarou raised his enchanted mace and rushed upon him, knowing that he had only to touch him with it to cleave him from head to foot. But, by God's blessing, Pantagruel's nimbleness saved him here a second time. Stepping briskly to one side, the terrible mace swept with a hissing noise through the air, striking a great rock which stood in the way, into which it crashed more than seventy-three feet, making a fire greater in bulk than nine thousand and six tons flash from the hole it had made.
Here was another chance for Pantagruel.
Seeing that Loupgarou was tugging away at his enchanted mace to pull it from the rock, Pantagruel ran towards him with his mast well-poised, feeling sure that, this time, he would take off his head; but, by bad luck, his mast just grazed the stock of Loupgarou's mace. Of course it broke, and, what is worse, broke within three hand-breadths of his own hand. Pantagruel was so much amazed at all this, as he had never before heard that Loupgarou's mace was enchanted, that he cried out, without very well knowing what he was doing: "Ho! Panurge, where art thou?"