In his hand, however, he held not a club, but a lantern, in which a firefly did service as candle.
Thanks to this phosphorescent sheen, which seemed to surround Kreiss as with a halo, Quadragant could examine him at leisure, and he asked himself how such an embryo could have flown out of his mouth, and how he, Quadragant, could have become his prisoner? The contemptuous glance which he threw at the dwarf made Kreiss aware of what he was discussing in his mind.
“You think you are not captured yet,” he said. “Very well, try to get up and walk, if you can!” Quadragant did try, and found that he was firmly fastened to the ground by ropes and chains, by each single hair of his head, by every hair on his body. He tried to speak to the pigmy, and he could not, by any effort of his, move his jaws in the slightest way.
“As to the manner of your death,” Kreiss went on, “if the wolves and the vultures do not hasten your end, hunger will do the work.”
At this thought of dying of hunger, a mode of death which he had always looked upon as the most terrible of all, Quadragant’s heart gave way, and he began to cry piteously. Two torrents of tears flowed down his cheeks, and after turning around the prominence of his lips, ran over from his chin.
Kreiss was compelled to leave his position, so as to avoid the double current.
Although quite firm in his resolution, he was naturally kind-hearted. These many tears of such unwonted size finally touched ‘him, but his sympathy made him only the more determined to render his vengeance as useful as it was complete. "Listen to me, giant. You can buy your life, if you choose.” Quadragant’s tears ceased to flow. Here was life offered to him, and with that life he saw first of all a good supper in store for him, and if his mouth had not been held so tight by the scaffolding erected in it by Kreiss, his big face would have grinned from ear to ear.
