"I am Mikas," said the third, who had a round face, a bulbous nose whose color was that of a ripe tomato, flapping pointed ears too large for his face, and a pair of perfectly round eyes.

"Yeah? But where am I?" Jenkins persisted.

"In the land of Gnat," all three piped in unison.

Slowly the brain-fog was clearing for Jenkins. The miracle of his landing safely was still not quite clear, nor could he understand the presence of these odd beings. But as reason returned to Jenkins, it told him something had happened which would perhaps be unexplainable.

He pointed toward the castle and said: "Who lives there?"

"Lucretia ..." they answered again in unison.

Now there's a familiar name, Jenkins thought, while at the same time a horrifying idea occurred to him. If it were Lucretia Borgia, he thought, then he might be dead. Suddenly, there was a spine-chilling roar, a vast crashing in the underbrush close by, and a tremendous boulder sailed by and disappeared over the lip of the chasm. Its crashing echoes could be heard for a long time afterward. When Jenkins recovered his balance, the gnomes had disappeared.

Jenkins' eyes narrowed in search of them, but after one look at the thick underbrush, he turned aside and began to search for a path leading either through the brush or down the steep sides of the cliff. There wasn't much choice, he discovered. In fact, there was no choice at all.

"Ho-ho!" a stentorian voice bellowed, seemingly from at his very heels. "Look what we have here!"

Once more Jenkins did a pirouette. Facing him were three men. They seemed to come in series of threes in this screwy place, he thought. But these were quite different than the gnomes he had first seen.

These were giants, all dressed in the same manner. Each wore the skin of a wild animal draped about him. Only their middles were covered, and their immensely broad and hairy chests and legs, which were like tree-trunks, stood out in naked and unpretty relief. They had not known the touch of a razor for a very long time. Their beards reached almost to their waists, while their heads were crowned with a tangled growth of wiry brush.

Each man was armed with a spiked club, on which he was resting as he regarded the stranger.

"He's mine," one said suddenly. "I saw him first."

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