Myths That Every Child Should Know | Page 8

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 ashore, seems to have been thrown up
from the very deepest bottom of the sea. Well, the old man would have
put you in mind of just such a wave-tossed spar! But Hercules, the
instant he set eyes on this strange figure, was convinced that it could be
no other than the Old One, who was to direct him on his way.
Yes, it was the selfsame Old Man of the Sea whom the hospitable
maidens had talked to him about. Thanking his stars for the lucky
accident of finding the old fellow asleep, Hercules stole on tiptoe
toward him, and caught him by the arm and leg.
"Tell me," cried he, before the Old One was well awake, "which is the
way to the garden of the Hesperides?"
As you may easily imagine, the Old Man of the Sea awoke in a fright.
But his astonishment could hardly have been greater than was that of

Hercules, the next moment. For, all of a sudden, the Old One seemed to
disappear out of his grasp, and he found himself holding a stag by the
fore and hind leg! But still he kept fast hold. Then the stag disappeared,
and in its stead there was a sea bird, fluttering and screaming, while
Hercules clutched it by the wing and claw! But the bird could not get
away. Immediately afterward, there was an ugly three-headed dog,
which growled and barked at Hercules, and snapped fiercely at the
hands by which he held him! But Hercules would not let him go. In
another minute, instead of the three-headed dog, what should appear
but Geryon, the six-legged man monster, kicking at Hercules with five
of his legs, in order to get the remaining one at liberty! But Hercules
held on. By and by, no Geryon was there, but a huge snake, like one of
those which Hercules had strangled in his babyhood, only a hundred
times as big; and it twisted and twined about the hero's neck and body,
and threw its tail high into the air, and opened its deadly jaws as if to
devour him outright; so that it was really a very terrible spectacle! But
Hercules was no whit disheartened, and squeezed the great snake so
tightly that he soon began to hiss with pain.
You must understand that the Old Man of the Sea, though he generally
looked so much like the wave-beaten figurehead of a vessel, had the
power of assuming any shape he pleased. When he found himself so
roughly seized by Hercules, he had been in hopes of putting him into
such surprise and terror, by these magical transformations, that the hero
would be glad to let him go. If Hercules had relaxed his grasp, the Old
One would certainly have plunged down to the very bottom of the sea,
whence he would not soon have given himself the trouble of coming up,
in order to answer any impertinent questions. Ninety-nine people out of
a hundred, I suppose, would have been frightened out of their wits by
the very first of his ugly shapes, and would have taken to their heels at
once. For one of the hardest things in this world is to see the difference
between real dangers and imaginary ones.
But, as Hercules held on so stubbornly, and only squeezed the Old One
so much the tighter at every change of shape, and really put him to no
small torture, he finally thought it best to reappear in his own figure. So
there he was again, a fishy, scaly, web-footed sort of personage, with

something like a tuft of seaweed at his chin.
"Pray, what do you want with me?" cried the Old One, as soon as he
could take breath; for it is quite a tiresome affair to go through so many
false shapes. "Why do you squeeze me so hard? Let me go this moment,
or I shall begin to consider you an extremely uncivil person!"
"My name is Hercules!" roared the mighty stranger. "And you will
never get out of my clutch until you tell me the nearest way to the
garden of the Hesperides!"
When the old fellow heard who it was that had caught him, he saw with
half an eye that it would be necessary to tell him everything that