ths. They talked
about the hero long after he was gone.

"We will crown him with the loveliest of our garlands," said they, "when
he returns hither with the three golden apples, after slaying the dragon
with a hundred heads."

Meanwhile, Hercules travelled constantly onward, over hill and dale, and
through the solitary woods. Sometimes he swung his club aloft, and
splintered a mighty oak with a downright blow. His mind was so full of
the giants and monsters with whom it was the business of his life to
fight, that perhaps he mistook the great tree for a giant or a monster.
And so eager was Hercules to achieve what he had undertaken, that he
almost regretted to have spent so much time with the damsels, wasting
idle breath upon the story of his adventures. But thus it always is with
persons who are destined to perform great things. What they have already
done seems less than nothing. What they have taken in hand to do seems
worth toil, danger, and life itself. Persons who happened to be passing
through the forest must have been affrighted to see him smite the trees
with his great club. With but a single blow, the trunk was riven as by
the stroke of lightning and the broad boughs came rustling and crashing
down.

Hastening forward, without ever pausing or looking behind, he by and by
heard the sea roaring at a distance. At this sound, he increased his
speed, and soon came to a beach, where the great surf waves tumbled
themselves upon the hard sand, in a long line of snowy foam. At one end
of the beach, however, there was a pleasant spot, where some green
shrubbery clambered up a cliff, making its rocky face look soft and
beautiful. A carpet of verdant grass, largely intermixed with
sweet-smelling clover, covered the narrow space between the bottom of
the cliff and the sea. And what should Hercules espy there but an old
man, fast asleep!

But was it really and truly an old man? Certainly, at first sight, it
looked very like one; but, on closer inspection, it rather seemed to be
some kind of a creature that lived in the sea. For on his legs and arms
there were scales, such as fishes have; he was web-footed and
web-fingered, after the fashion of a duck; and his long beard, being of
a greenish tinge, had more the appearance of a tuft of seaweed than of
an ordinary beard. Have you never seen a stick of timber, that has been
long tossed about by the waves, and has got all overgrown with
barnacles, and, at last drifting ashor