He tells him to go again, and ask his sailors if there is a fast runner among them. The captain goes and asks his sailors if there is any fast runner among them.
One of them says to him, “As for me, I can catch a hare running.”
“So much the better, so much the better; that will be of use to you.”
The captain goes to tell the serpent that there is one who can catch a hare running. The serpent says to him:
“You will land the runner at this port, and you will tell him that he must go to the top of a little mountain; that there is a little house there, and an old, old woman in it; and that there is there a steel, a flint, and a tinder-box; and that he must bring these three things on board one by one, making a separate journey each time.”
Our runner goes off, and comes to this house. He sees the old woman, with red eyes, spinning at the threshold of her door. He asks her for a drop of water, that he has walked a long way without finding any water, and will she give him a little drop? The old woman says to him, “No.” He begs her again, telling her that he does not know the roads in the country, nor where he is going to. This old woman kept constantly looking at the chimney-piece, and she said to him:
“I am going to give you some, then.”
While she went to the pitcher, our runner takes the steel off the chimney-piece, and goes off at full speed, like the lightning; but the old woman is after him. At the very instant that he is about to leap into the ship the old woman catches him, and snatches off a bit of his coat, and a piece of the skin of his back with it.[28] The captain goes to the serpent, and says to him:
“We have got the steel, but our man has got the skin of his back torn off.”
He gives him a remedy, and a good drink, and tells him that the man will be cured by to-morrow, but that he must go again next day.