dark, deadly, and destructive war,
waged by the princes and potentates of those parts, both spiritual and
temporal, against what do you think? One thing I am sure of. That unless
I told you, you would never know; nor how they waged that war either;
for all their strategy and art military consisted in the safe and easy
process of stopping their ears and screaming, "Oh, don't tell us!" and
then running away.

So when Tom came into that land, he found them all, high and low, man,
woman, and child, running for their lives day and night continually, and
entreating not to be told they didn't know what: only the land being an
island, and they having a dislike to the water (being a musty lot for
the most part), they ran round and round the shore for ever, which (as
the island was exactly of the same circumference as the planet on which
we have the honour of living) was hard work, especially to those who had
business to look after. But before them, as bandmaster and fugleman, ran
a gentleman shearing a pig; the melodious strains of which animal led
them for ever, if not to conquest, still to flight; and kept up their
spirits mightily with the thought that they would at least have the
pig's wool for their pains.

And running after them, day and night, came such a poor, lean, seedy,
hard-worked old giant, as ought to have been cockered up, and had a good
dinner given him, and a good wife found him, and been set to play with
little children; and then he would have been a very presentable old
fellow after all; for he had a heart, though it was considerably
overgrown with brains.

He was made up principally of fish bones and parchment, put together
with wire and Canada balsam; and smelt strongly of spirits, though he
never drank anything but water: but spirits he used somehow, there was
no denying. He had a great pair of spectacles on his nose, and a
butterfly-net in one hand, and a geological hammer in the other; and
was hung all over with pockets, full of collecting boxes, bottles,
microscopes, telescopes, barometers, ordnance maps, scalpels, forceps,
photographic apparatus, and all other tackle for finding out everything
about everything, and a little more too. And, most strange of all, he
was running not forwards but backwards, as fast as he could.

Away all the good folks ran from him, except Tom, who stood his ground
and dodged between his legs; and the giant, when he had passed him,
looked down, and cried, as if he was qu