"What? who are you? And you actually don't run away, like all the rest?" But he had to take his spectacles off, Tom remarked, in order to see him plainly. Tom told him who he was; and the giant pulled out a bottle and a cork instantly, to collect him with. But Tom was too sharp for that, and dodged between his legs and in front of him; and then the giant could not see him at all. "No, no, no!" said Tom, "I've not been round the world, and through the world, and up to Mother Carey's haven, beside being caught in a net and called a Holothurian and a Cephalopod, to be bottled up by any old giant like you." And when the giant understood what a great traveller Tom had been, he made a truce with him at once, and would have kept him there to this day to pick his brains, so delighted was he at finding any one to tell him what he did not know before. "Ah, you lucky little dog!" said he at last, quite simply--for he was the simplest, pleasantest, honestest, kindliest old Dominie Sampson of a giant that ever turned the world upside down without intending it--"ah, you lucky little dog! If I had only been where you have been, to see what you have seen!" "Well," said Tom, "if you want to do that, you had best put your head under water for a few hours, as I did, and turn into a water-baby, or some other baby, and then you might have a chance." "Turn into a baby, eh? If I could do that, and know what was happening to me for but one hour, I should know everything then, and be at rest. But I can't; I can't be a little child again; and I suppose if I could, it would be no use, because then I should know nothing about what was happening to me. Ah, you lucky little dog!" said the poor old giant. "But why do you run after all these poor people?" said Tom, who liked the giant very much. "My dear, it's they that have been running after me, father and son, for hundreds and hundreds of years, throwing stones at me till they have knocked off my spectacles fifty times, and calling me a malignant and a turbaned Turk, who beat a Venetian and traduced the State--goodness only knows what they mean, for I never read poetry--and hunting me round and round--though catch me they can't, for every time I go over the same ground, I go the faster, and grow the bigger. While all I want is to be friends with them, and to tell them something to their advantage: only somehow they are so strangely afraid of hearing it. But, I suppose I am not a man of the world, and have no tact." "But why don't you turn round and tell them so?" "Because I can't. You see, I must go backwards, if I am to go at all." "But why don't you stop, and let them come up to you?" "Why, my dear, only think. If I did, all the butterflies and cockyolybirds would fly past me, and then I should catch no more new species, and should grow rusty and mouldy, and die. And I don't intend to do that, my dear; for I have a destiny before me, they say: though what it is I don't know, and don't care."