Page:Tom Swift in Captivity.djvu/148

138 before I started on this trip. Of course there's lots of wild stories about giants, but there have really been some very big men. Take the skeleton in the museum of Trinity College, Dublin. It is eight feet and a half in height, and the living man must have even taller. There was a giant named O'Brien, and his skeleton is in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of England—that one is eight feet two inches high, while there are reliable records to show that, when living, O'Brien was two inches taller than that. In fact, according to the books, there have been a number of giants nine feet high."

"Then these chaps aren't so wonderful," replied Ned.

"Oh, we haven't seen them all yet. We may find some bigger than these fellows, though any one of these would be a prize for a museum. Not a one is less than eight feet, and if we could get one say ten feet—that would be a find."

"Rather an awkward one," commented Ned.

It did not seem possible that they were really in giant land, yet such was the fact. Of course the country itself was no different from any other part of the jungle, for merely because big men lived in it did not make the trees or plants any larger.

"I tell you how I account for it," said Tom,