Page:The Floating Prince - Frank R Stockton.djvu/184

Rh He had hardly expected they would commence so soon, and he did not know what to do. As for really fighting them, he had determined not to do that, or he could have drawn his great sword, and chopped the whole army up fine, in about three-quarters of an hour. The stones, and arrows, and spears came thicker and thicker. Numbers of soldiers had crossed the ditch, and were already on top of the walls, and they could take such good aim from their new positions, that several missiles had already struck Derido in the face. A spear hit him on the side of the nose.

"There!" he cried. "If that nasty thing had gone in my eye, it would have made me mad."

He had provided himself with no ammunition whatever, and now that the fighting was getting to be at such close quarters, he looked for something with which to defend himself. He was so big that it was of no use to try to get behind anything. As he looked around, he saw his pickle-jars, and, breaking a number of them, he commenced hurling handfuls of pickles at his assailants. When a pickle hit a man in the face, the man howled, I can tell you; and, for a while, Derido kept the enemy back with these sour missiles. But a thousand jars of pickles will not last a giant long, when he uses them in that way, and the supply was soon exhausted. And now the soldiers were coming in on all sides. Gantalor was on the walls, shouting to his men and waving his sword above his head, and Derido was hit by something or other every moment, and as the men were nearer, the hits were harder. There was nothing for him to throw, but great hard things, which might kill people; and so, making a very wry face, Derido ran to the rear-wall, made a skip right over it and the ditch, and evacuated the fort. What a shout the soldiers then set up!