Page:The book of wonder voyages (1919).djvu/221

 long night. For a long, long while we sailed under this strange sky, till at last our wood fell short and we were unable to light any fires. So having no place to cook our food we staved off our hunger with raw meat. But those of us who ate of it fell ill, for we could not digest such food. Thus we were in terrible straits; for when we took of the uncooked food it brought on sickness and disease, and if we ate nothing we could but starve. Just as we were about to despair, a gleam of help shone for us in the distance, even as the string breaks most easily when it is stretched tightest, and the daylight begins to break when the night is at its darkest. For we saw the twinkle of a fire a little way off, and we still hoped that our lives might be spared. As for me, I thought that heaven had sent the fire, and made up my mind to go and take some of it. To be surer of getting back to my friends I fastened a jewel on the masthead to enable me easily to recognize my ship. On landing, my eyes fell on a cavern scooped out of the rocks, and which one reached by a narrow path. Telling my men to wait outside, I went in and there saw two swart, very huge men with long horny noses throwing any fuel they could find on their fire. The entrance to this cavern was hideous in the extreme; the doorposts, falling from decay, the walls grimy with mold, the roof dirty, and snakes crawled along the floor. All this disgusted the eye as well as the mind. One of the giants greeted me, and I said I had begun a most difficult quest, fain as I was to visit a strange god and to explore a region that