A solemn hush ensued, just emphasized by the slumbrous sound of the sparkling wavelets lapping those mighty forms as they lay all motionless and apparently inert. Yet it had been easy to see how along each bastion like flank the rolling tendons, each one a cable in itself, were tense and ready for instantaneous action, how the great muscle mounds were hardened around the gigantic masses of bone, and the flukes, each some hundred feet in area, did not yield to the heaving bosom of the swell, but showed an almost imperceptible vibration as of a fucus frond in a tide rip. After a perfect silence of some fifteen minutes an answer came--from the youngest of the group, who lay remote from the chief. “We have heard, O king, the words of wisdom, and our hearts rejoice. Truly we have been of the fortunate in this goodly realm, and ingrates indeed should we be had our training under so terrible a champion been wasted upon us. But therefore it is that we would forestall the shame that should overtake us did we wait until thy forces had waned and that all-conquering might had dwindled into dotage ere we essayed to put thy teaching into practice. Since thy deposition from this proud place must be, to whose forces could’st thou more honourably yield than to ours, the young warriors who have learned of thee all we know, and who will carry on the magnificent traditions thou hast handed down to us in a manner worthy of our splendid sire! And if we be slain, as well may be, remembering with whom we do battle, the greater our glory, the greater thine also.”
A deep murmur like the bursting of a tidal wave against the sea-worn lava rocks of Ascension marked the satisfaction of the group at this exposition of their views, and as if actuated by one set of nerves the colossal four swung round shoulder to shoulder, and faced the ocean monarch. Moving not by a barnacle’s breadth, he answered, “It is well spoken, oh my children, ye are wiser than I. And be the issue what it will, all shall know that the royal race still holds. As in the days when our fathers met and slew the slimy dragons of the pit, and, unscared by fathom-long claws or ten-ply coats of mail, dashed them in pieces and chased them from the blue deep they befouled, so to-day when the world has grown old, and our ancient heritage has sorely shrunken, our warfare shall still be the mightiest among created things.”