Meanwhile , Hercules travelled constantly onward , over hill and dale , and through the solitary woods . Sometimes he swung his club aloft , and splintered a mighty oak with a downright blow . His mind was so full of the giants and monsters with whom it was the business of his life to fight , that perhaps he mistook the great tree for a giant or a monster . And so eager was Hercules to achieve what he had undertaken , that he almost regretted to have spent so much time with the damsels , wasting idle breath upon the story of his adventures . But thus it always is with persons who are destined to perform great things . What they have already done seems less than nothing . What they have taken in hand to do seems worth toil , danger , and life itself . Persons who happened to be passing through the forest must have been affrighted to see him smite the trees with his great club . With but a single blow , the trunk was riven as by the stroke of lightning , and the broad boughs came rustling and crashing down . Hastening forward , without ever pausing or looking behind , he by and by heard the sea roaring at a distance . At this sound , he increased his speed , and soon came to a beach , where the great surf-waves tumbled themselves upon the hard sand , in a long line of snowy foam . At one end of the beach , however , there was a pleasant spot , where some green shrubbery clambered up a cliff , making its rocky face look soft and beautiful . A carpet of verdant grass , largely intermixed with sweet-smelling clover , covered the narrow space between the bottom of the cliff and the sea . And what should Hercules espy there , but an old man , fast asleep ! But was it really and truly an old man ? Certainly , at first sight , it looked very like one ; but , on closer inspection , it rather seemed to be some kind of a creature that lived in the sea . For , on his legs and arms there were scales , such as fishes have ; he was web-footed and web-fingered , after the fashion of a duck ; and his long beard , being of a greenish tinge , had more the appearance of a tuft of sea-weed than of an ordinary beard . Have you never seen a stick of timber , that has been long tossed about by the waves , and has got all overgrown with barnacles , and , at last drifting ashore , seems to have been thrown up from the very deepest bottom of the sea ? Well , the old man would have put you in mind of just such a wave-tost spar ! But Hercules , the instant he set eyes on this strange figure , was convinced that it could be no other than the Old One , who was to direct him on his way .
Yes ; it was the selfsame Old Man of the Sea , whom the hospitable maidens had talked XXXXX him about .
For by of on over than through to upon without