m he straddled the bow to dig through the fog with his
eyes and watch out for danger ahead. We went along a steady gait, but
not very fast, and the fog got solider and solider, so solid that Jim
looked dim and ragged and smoky through it. It was awful still, and we
talked low and was anxious. Now and then Jim would say:

"Highst her a p'int, Mars Tom, highst her!" and up she would skip, a
foot or two, and we would slide right over a flat-roofed mud cabin, with
people that had been asleep on it just beginning to turn out and gap
and stretch; and once when a feller was clear up on his hind legs so he
could gap and stretch better, we took him a blip in the back and knocked
him off. By and by, after about an hour, and everything dead still
and we a-straining our ears for sounds and holding our breath, the fog
thinned a little, very sudden, and Jim sung out in an awful scare:

"Oh, for de lan's sake, set her back, Mars Tom, here's de biggest giant
outen de 'Rabian Nights a-comin' for us!" and he went over backwards in
the boat.

Tom slammed on the back-action, and as we slowed to a standstill a man's
face as big as our house at home looked in over the gunnel, same as a
house looks out of its windows, and I laid down and died. I must 'a'
been clear dead and gone for as much as a minute or more; then I come
to, and Tom had hitched a boat-hook on to the lower lip of the giant and
was holding the balloon steady with it whilst he canted his head back
and got a good long look up at that awful face.

Jim was on his knees with his hands clasped, gazing up at the thing in a
begging way, and working his lips, but not getting anything out. I took
only just a glimpse, and was fading out again, but Tom says:

"He ain't alive, you fools; it's the Sphinx!"

I never see Tom look so little and like a fly; but that was because
the giant's head was so big and awful. Awful, yes, so it was, but not
dreadful any more, because you could see it was a noble face, and kind
of sad, and not thinking about you, but about other things and larger.
It was stone, reddish stone, and its nose and ears battered, and that
give it an abused look, and you felt sorrier for it for that.

We stood off a piece, and sailed around it and over it, and it was just
grand. It was a man's head, or maybe a woman's, on a tiger's body a
hundred and twenty-five foot long, and there was a dear little temple
between its front paws. All but the head used to be under the sand