rocky
floor.

"Lift it up," Charlie said.

Glaudot giggled and then began to cry. He was hysterical. "The three of
us?" Charlie asked.

"I don't know," Robin said.

Glaudot laughed hysterically. The Cyclops stirred. That made up
Charlie's mind. He placed his end of the stake carefully on the floor
and went back to Glaudot. He struck Glaudot neatly and precisely on the
point of the jaw and Glaudot collapsed in his arms.

Then they returned with the stake to the fire. Charlie scraped and
pushed the embers together with a charcoal log. They began to toast the
point of the stake.

"We've got to hurry," Robin said.

"The skin of his eyelid is like armor plate," Charlie told her. "We've
got to make sure it doesn't turn the point aside."

The flock stirred and began to grow more lively. It was now dawn
outside. The Cyclops yawned in his sleep and stretched out an arm the
size of an oak tree.

"Hurry!" Robin said urgently.

The Cyclops rolled over, its face to the wall.

"The eye!" Charlie groaned. "We'll never be able to reach the eye now."

They kept at their work, though. There was nothing else they could do.
The surface wood of the big stake was taking on a dull cherry-red color.
Finally Charlie said: "That's enough, I guess."

The Cyclops rolled over again. They were in luck, Charlie thought, but
changed his mind immediately. The Cyclops sat up, its eye blinking
sleepily. It yawned and stretched mightily, then stared stupidly for a
few moments at the flock of sheep. Charlie and the others stood frozen,
not daring to move. The Cyclops brushed at the sheep with its hand, and
two of them crashed with bone-crushing thuds and death-rattle bleats
against the wall. The Cyclops glared stupidly about, its one great eye
squinting. Clearly, it was looking for something else to eat. Not sheep.
People ...

It got down on hands and knees and groped on the floor. The arm swept
out. The hand flashed ponderously by, missing Robin by only a few feet.
The Cyclops advanced on its knees, searching, its mouth slavering now.
It was hungry and soon it would eat ...

The hand swept by again, caught a sheep. The hand lifted, the sheep
bleated, the jaws crunched once and the sheep disappeared. The Cyclops
wiped a trace of blood from its lips. The hand came down again,
closer ...

* * * * *

"The stake!" Charlie whispered fiercely.

They brought it up horizontally. Charlie stood just behind the