THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES
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 sea-weed 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 he wanted to know. The Old One was an inhabitant of the sea, you must recollect, and roamed about everywhere, like other sea-faring people. Of course, he had often heard of the fame of Hercules, and of the wonderful things that he was constantly performing in various parts of the earth, and how determined he always was to accomplish whatever he undertook. He therefore made no more attempts to escape, but told the hero how to find the garden of the Hesperides, and likewise warned him of many difficulties which must be overcome, before he could arrive thither.
‘You must go on, thus and thus,’ said the Old Man of the Sea, after taking the points of the compass, ‘till you
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