Satisfaction I will have, and this it shall be, I will take you whole and broil you for breakfast," which he had no sooner uttered, than tumbling into the pit, he made the very foundations of the Mount to shake. This unexpected noise aroused the giant, who rushed from his cave, crying: "You incorrigible villain, are you come here to disturb my rest? You shall pay dearly for this. This completed, Jack placed himself on the contrary side of the pit, fartherest from the giant's lodging, and, just at the break of day, he put the horn to his mouth, and blew, Tantivy, Tantivy. Then strewing a little mould upon it, it appeared like plain ground. So he furnished himself with a horn, shovel, and pickaxe, and went over to the Mount in the beginning of a dark winter's evening, when he fell to work, and before morning had dug a pit twenty-two feet deep, and nearly as broad, covering it over with long sticks and straw. The giant's treasure, they said, was the recompense. One day Jack, happening to be present at the town hall when the magistrates were sitting in council about the giant, asked what reward would be given to the person who destroyed him. This course he had followed for many years, so that all Cornwall was impoverished by his depredations. The good folk, at his approach, forsook their habitations, while he seized on their cattle, making nothing of carrying half-a-dozen oxen on his back at a time and as for their sheep and hogs, he would tie them round his waist like a bunch of bandoliers.
His food was other men's cattle, which often became his prey, for whensoever he wanted food he would wade over to the main-land, where he would furnish himself with whatever came in his way. He lived in a cave in the midst of the Mount, and would not suffer any one else to live near him. In those days the Mount of Cornwall was kept by a huge and monstrous giant of eighteen feet in height, and about three yards in compass, of a fierce and grim countenance, the terror of all the neighbouring towns and villages. Never was any person heard of that could worst him, and he very often even baffled the learned by his sharp and ready invention. He was brisk and of a ready lively wit, so that whatever he could not perform by force and strength he completed by ingenious wit and policy. IN the reign of King Arthur, there lived in the county of Cornwall, near the Land's End of England, a wealthy farmer who had one only son called Jack. Jack the Giant Killer Legends of old England by Edwin Hartland
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