People were running about everywhere, screaming and shouting. By now the crane had made its way into the goods yard, and after destroying a string of railway trucks drawn up in a siding it was busy with a length of twisted track that hung from its mouth like steel spaghetti.
Jimmy drove forward, narrowly missing a wall that suddenly collapsed, and caught up with the crane as it reached the promenade.
“Stop it, stop it, whoever you are!” he shouted. But the crane seemed to be concentrating on lifting up a motorcycle, the wheels revolving as the grab held it by the handlebars and shook it before depositing the pieces on to the remains of a small fishing boat.
Jimmy took advantage of this to dodge in underneath.
The cab was quite empty!
He dodged out again hurriedly, just in time to avoid the great jaws. He sat for a moment stupefied. He could not believe his eyes and he felt very frightened indeed.
“This won’t do, Jimmy my lad; you’ve got to be brave,” he said to himself, but he only felt more terrified than ever.
Suddenly catching sight of the funfair on the sea-front the monster made its way towards it and reared up above the roundabout. As it did so it let out a great roar. Jimmy, trying to convince himself that it was only the cable running out over the bearings, watched while it crushed in the top and then turned to the dodgem cars, gathering them up and depositing them, bent and broken, all around.
Jimmy took this opportunity to make a second attack, this time driving the digger into the side of the cabin with a force that flung him across his seat. The monster, by now chewing one of the swingboats, hardly appeared to notice.
Then the great grab swung over towards Jimmy. There seemed to be eyes in it, he thought, fixing him with a malevolent stare. As the huge jaws ran close to the ground in his direction, Jimmy raised the arm at the back of the digger, hooked it into the monster’s cable, and went into reverse. The cable retracted with a twang that made the monster shudder.
A great crowd of people had by now gathered at a safe distance. Most of them were silent, although one or two shouted “Let him have it, Jimmy!” or, “Go to it, Jim!” as he drove at the massive cab again and again.
Then suddenly Jimmy accelerated away and appeared to try to hide behind a row of beach huts built further along the promenade. The crane lumbered through them and then stopped for a moment to crumple up the corrugated iron roofs and throw them into the water. Jimmy drove back the way he had come, a punctured rear tyre drawing a wide black stripe on the concrete behind him, and raced down the long narrow jetty about fifty yards away, stationing himself at the very end where the sea was still deep enough for large waves to lap the base.
“He’s running away,” said someone.
“What’s to become of us now?” shouted someone else.
The monster finished with the beach huts, and then looked round again for the red digger. It soon caught sight of it, and Jimmy and the crane stayed for a long time quite still eyeing each other across the sea.
The sun rose and bathed everything in a red glow that changed to pink and eventually to gold, and still they waited, and still the crowd continued to watch, silently.
Suddenly Jimmy let out a loud jeering cry and at the same time sounded the horn of his digger over and over again. At this the monster seemed to gather all its evil strength, and it charged into the sea straight towards him.
At first it travelled quite smoothly, seeming as much at home in the water now as it had done as a Brontosaurus all those millions of years ago; but gradually as the water began to seep into the engine it slowed and, with the cab nearly submerged, came to a halt. The huge grab hung still for a moment, then fell with a loud whining of pulleys, sending a great wave to the shore. For a whole minute the terrible machine stayed motionless while the swell lapped gently round it; and then it tilted slightly sideways, lurched forward, and began to sink inexorably into the soft yellow sand. And so the spirit of the dreadful monster, trapped forever in the heavy steel body that it had taken for itself, disappeared helplessly beneath the pleasant waters of Marshdene Bay.
THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
Did you ever hear of the golden apples that grew in the garden of the Hesperides? No?
Even in old, half-forgotten times, before the garden of the Hesperides was overrun by weeds, a great many people doubted whether there could be real trees that bore apples of solid gold upon their branches. But this did not stop adventurous young men, who desired to do a braver thing than any of their fellows, setting out in quest of the wonderful fruit. Many of them returned no more; none of them brought back the apples. It was said that there was a dragon beneath the tree, with a hundred terrible heads, fifty of which were always on the watch while the other fifty slept.
But at the time of which I am going to speak, a hero was wandering through the pleasant land of Italy who had a mighty club in his hand and a bow and quiver slung across his shoulders. He wore the skin of the biggest and fiercest lion that ever had been seen, and which he himself had killed. As he went on his way, he continually enquired whether he was on the right road to the famous garden. But none of the country people knew anything about the matter, and many looked as if they would have laughed at the question if the stranger had not carried so big a club.
So he journeyed on and on, still making the same enquiry, until, at last, he came to the brink of a river where several beautiful young women sat making wreaths of flowers.
“Can you tell me, pretty maidens,” asked the stranger, “if this is the right way to the garden of the Hesperides?”
“The garden of the Hesperides?” cried one young woman. “We thought mortals had grown weary of seeking it, after so many disappointments. What do you want there?”
“A certain king, who is my cousin, has ordered me to get him three of the golden apples.”
“Are you aware,” another young maiden asked, “that a terrible dragon with a hundred heads keeps watch under the golden apple-tree?”
“I am,” answered the stranger calmly. “But, from my cradle upwards, it has been my business, and almost my pastime, to deal with serpents and dragons.”
Then he carelessly lifted his mighty club, and let it fall upon a rock that lay half buried in the earth, near by. With the force of that idle blow, the great rock was shattered to pieces. It cost the stranger no more effort to achieve this feat of giant’s strength than for one of the young maidens to touch her sister’s cheek with a flower.
“Do you believe,” he asked with a smile, “that such a blow would have crushed one of the dragon’s heads?”
Then he sat down on the grass and told them the story of his life, or as much as he could remember, from the day he was first cradled in a warrior’s shield. While he had lain there, two immense serpents had come gliding over the floor and opened their hideous jaws to devour him; and he, a baby of a few months old, had gripped one of the fierce snakes in each of his little fists and strangled them to death. When he was but a stripling he had killed a huge lion, almost as big as the one whose vast and shaggy hide he now wore upon his shoulders. The next thing he had done was to fight a battle with an ugly monster, called a hydra, which had no less than nine heads and exceedingly sharp teeth in every one of them.
“But the dragon of the Hesperides,” observed one young maiden, “has a hundred heads.”
“Nevertheless,” replied the stranger, “I would rather fight two such dragons than a single hydra. For, as fast as I cut off one head, two others grew in its place; and besides, there was one head that could not possibly be killed, but kept biting as fiercely as ever, long after it was cut off. So I was forced to bury it under a stone, where it doubtless lives to this day.”