sixteen monkeys, and a great number of parrots. He was now at Java
superintending the manufacture of a very powerful net of grass-ropes,
an invention of his own, with which he hoped to catch a good many more
wild animals, and return to America, and make his fortune by
exhibiting them for Mr. Barnum.

Now Zebedee Nabbum listened with profound attention to Little Jacket's
story, and pondered and pondered over it.

[Illustration: MR. NABBUM HEARS LITTLE JACKET'S STORY.]

"And after all," he said to himself, "why shouldn't it be true? Don't
we read in Scripter that there war giants once? Then why hadn't there
ought to be some on 'em left--in some of them remote islands whar
nobody never was? Grimminy! If it should be true--if we should find
Jacky's island--if we should see the big critter alive, or his
wife--if we could slip a noose under his legs and throw him down--or
carry along the great net and trap him while he war down on the beach
arter his clams, and manage to tie him and carry him off in my ship!
He'd kick, I know. He'd a kind o' roar and struggle, and maybe swamp
the biggest raft we could make to fetch him. But couldn't we starve
him into submission? Or, if we gave him plenty of clams, couldn't we
keep him quiet? Or couldn't we give the critter _Rum?_--I guess
he don't know nothin' of ardent sperets--and obfusticate his wits--and
get him reglar boozy--couldn't we do any thing we chose to, then? An't
it worth tryin', any how? If we _could_ catch him, and get him to
Ameriky alive, or only his skeleton, my fortune's made, I cal'late. I
kind o' can't think that young fellow's been a gullin' me. He talks as
though he'd seen the awful big critters with his own eyes. So do the
other six fellows--they couldn't all of 'em have been dreamin'."