This was too much for King Ptush. He rose up immediately from his seat and summoned his entourage.
"You will make ready for a strenuous afternoon," he said to them sharply. "I am going after the biggest game that history records. Colonel Methuselah has just told me of a quarry alongside of which all that we have landed in the past months sinks into insignificance."
"You do well to call it a quarry," I cried. "There never was a better—and it is only ten miles from here as the griffin flies."
The king's face flushed with joy at the prospect, but suddenly a look of perplexity came into his eyes.
"By the way," he said, "how shall we bring him down—with a slungshot or a catapult?"
Gr't. Gr't. Gr't. Grandfather Adam as a disciplinarian.
I laughed.
"No ordinary ammunition will serve Your Majesty's purpose here," I said. "The only thing for you to do is to steal quietly up to him while he sleeps. Surround him in the silence of some black night, and build a barbed-wire fence around him. Once you succeed in doing this he will not try to get away, and you can have him removed at Your Majesty's pleasure."