had remarked a distant hill top, and that, of which I occasionally got
a glance, together with the glow in the sky where the sun was sinking,
enabled me to steer a tolerably direct course in the direction I wished
to go. After I had killed the serpent I loaded one of my barrels with
small shot, that I might kill a bird for my supper, the pangs of hunger
warning me that I should not get on at all without eating. I very soon
knocked over a pea-fowl and a parrot. Of the latter I had frequently
eaten pies during our journey. I was thus in no fear of starving, and I
thought that if I could have had Solon with me I should have had no
cause to fear. As it was, I felt very solitary, and not a little
uncomfortable.

The gloom increased. I pushed on through a dense wood. I thought that
I must be near the spot I was seeking. It appeared to be a lighter
a-head, and I fancied that I saw the grey of the rocks against the sky
above them. Eager to get out of the forest, where a bear or a boar
might, without giving me warning, pounce down on me, I pushed on, when
suddenly I saw what appeared to be a monstrous giant standing in the
portal of a cavern. Instinctively I drew back. Naturally my nerves
were in a very excited state after all that had occurred. I expected to
see him, like the giants in fairy stories, rush forward and try to seize
me by the nape of the neck, to clap me into his pockets, or his caldron
or cavern, or any other receptacle for his victims.

"I'll have a shot at him, at all events, if he makes the attempt, and
show him the effects of a good English rifle," said I to myself.

I was standing under the shade of the wood, close by the trunk of a huge
tree. As I peeped out, more clearly to observe the monster, it seemed
as if a bright light was playing round his head, while his eyes, I
fancied, kept moving round and round in search of something. I thought
that perhaps he had heard my approach and was looking for me. I could
almost have shrieked out with horror, but the so doing, it occurred to
me, would betray me. So wonderfully real appeared the monster to my
excited imagination, that I was about to raise my rifle to my shoulder
to be ready to fire should he approach me, when the light on his head
faded away, and I saw that it had been caused by the glow of the setting
sun in the sky--the eyes sunk into their sockets, the features no longer
appeared in the bold relief in which they had before been prese