But the extreme weight of the oxen thus hanging on one side of the tree had made a kink in the trunk, and a peculiar thing happened—the tree now grew upward in kinks. The king was simply beside himself with passion and with his own hand cut off the head of the oxen driver; and he then commanded his commander of war engines to knock the tree down with a battering ram. Now, this commander had had nothing to do for ages, as the king had hitherto been a peaceable man, and he felt the honor of receiving a command from his monarch so keenly he strutted about the work of arranging the ram for decisive action. This was a ponderous piece of machinery, had cost many talents of gold, but had never been brought into actual use. It had an ugly-looking ram which seemed powerful enough to have knocked down a castle with a single blow. It was worked by electricity, and all the commander had to do was to press the button and it would do the kicking. When all was ready, he pressed the button. The ram shot forward with enormous velocity, only to come at the tree as one of the kinks removed the trunk from its track. And no matter how rapidly the button was pushed, so it was thought, a kink in which there was no tree was always found in front of the shooting ram. So the commander was beheaded, and the king jumped from his horse and danced up and down in a frightful state. He turned upon my forefather and would have beheaded him on the spot for having told him about the thing, had not my forefather asked the privilege of cutting down the tree. He was at once commanded so to do, and in not very choice language, for the king was so far gone he had entirely forgotten the rules of polite society. My forefather had been thinking all this time and thinking pretty hard, too, for he felt pretty sure he would not be home for supper that night if the king got no golden apples. And he thought to some purpose, and had observed the tree very minutely. He took a long piece of heavy wire from his pocket, quickly placed it around the trunk of the tree, and, though he was carried some distance up before he could fasten it to his liking, he succeeded in doing so and dropping safely to the ground, though it was a goodly jump he had to make. As the tree expanded in its growth of girth in proportion to its upward movement the wire soon began to cut into the trunk. Thus the tree was caught, for it had now grown to such a height if it did not keep on growing larger around it would become top-heavy and break off at the narrow point where was the wire. And now the king’s pleasure knew no more bounds than did his wrath, and he knighted my forefather on the spot. The work of the wire was made apparent by the waving of the tree top, which soon became quite visible; but the tree had grown so high when the wire had finished its task, the top fell far out into the ocean, with all its golden fruit.