THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES. 138

to devour him outright; so that it was really a very
terrible spectacle! But Hercules was no whit disheart-
ened, and squeezed the great suake 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
figure-head 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 trans-
formations, 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 sup-
pose, 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 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