He
carelessly lifted his mighty club, and let it fall upon a rock that lay
half buried in the earth, near by. With the force of that idle blow, the
great rock was shattered all to pieces. It cost the stranger no more
effort to achieve this feat of a giant's strength than for one of the
young maidens to touch her sister's rosy cheek with a flower.
"Do you not believe," said he, looking at the damsels with a smile,
"that such a blow would have crushed one of the dragon's hundred heads?"
Then he sat down on the grass, and told them the story of his life, or
as much of it as he could remember, from the day when he was first
cradled in a warrior's brazen shield. While he lay there, two immense
serpents came gliding over the floor, and opened their hideous jaws to
devour him; and he, a baby of a few months old, had griped one of the
fierce snakes in each of his little fists, and strangled them to death.
When he was but a stripling, he had killed a huge lion, almost as big as
the one whose vast and shaggy hide he now wore upon his shoulders. The
next thing that he had done was to fight a battle with an ugly sort of
monster, called a hydra, which had no less than nine heads, and
exceedingly sharp teeth in every one.
"But the dragon of the Hesperides, you know," observed one of the
damsels, "has a hundred heads!"
"Nevertheless," replied the stranger, "I would rather fight two such
dragons than a single hydra.
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