Little Jacket hoped the long boots were not those in one of which he
was concealed, but unfortunately they were the very ones. So he felt a
great hand clutch up the boots, and him with them, and put them down
in another place. Huggermugger then took up one of the boots and drew
it on, with a great grunt. He now proceeded to take up the other.
Little Jacket's first impulse was to run out and throw himself on the
giant's mercy, but he feared lest he should be taken for a rat.
Besides he now thought of a way to defend himself, at least for a
while. So he drew from his belt one of the long thorns he had cut from
the bush by the seaside, and held it ready to thrust it into his
adversary's foot, if he could. But he forgot that though it was as a
sword in _his_ hand, it was but a thorn to a giant. Huggermugger
had drawn the boot nearly on, and Little Jacket's daylight was all
gone, and the giant's great toes were pressing down on him, when he
gave them as fierce a thrust as he could with his thorn.
"Ugh!" roared out the giant, in a voice like fifty mad bulls; "wife,
wife, I say!"
"What's the matter, dear?" says wife.
"Here's one of your confounded needles in my boot. I wish to gracious
you'd be more careful how you leave them about!"
"A needle in your boot?" said the giantess, "how can that be? I
haven't been near your boots with my needles."
"Well, you feel there yourself, careless woman, and you'll see."
Whereupon the giantess took the boot, and put her great hand down into
the toe of it, when Little Jacket gave another thrust with his weapon.
"O-o-o-o!!" screams the wife. "There's something here, for it ran into
my finger; we must try to get it out. She then put her hand in again,
but very cautiously, and Little Jacket gave it another stab, which
made her cry out more loudly than before. Then Huggermugger put his
hand in, and again he roared out as he felt the sharp prick of the
thorn.
"It's no use," says he, flinging down the boot in a passion, almost
breaking Little Jacket's bones, as it fell. "Wife, take that boot to
the cobbler, and tell him to take that sharp thing out, whatever it
is, and send it back to me in an hour, for I must go a hunting today."
So off the obedient wife trotted to the shoemaker's, with the boot
under her arm. Little Jacket was curious to see whether the shoemaker
was a giant too. So when the boot was left in his workshop, he
contrived to peep out a little, and saw, instead of another
Huggermugger, only a crooked little dwarf, not more than two or three
times bigger than himself. He went by the name of Kobboltozo.
"Tell your husband," says he, "that I will look into his boot
presently--I am busy just at this moment--and will bring it myself to
his house."
Little Jacket was quite relieved to feel that he was safe out of the
giant's house, and that the giantess had gone. "Now," thought he, "I
think I know what to do."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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