When everybody who was able to come was there, the Griffin stood still and addressed the meeting.
"I have had a contemptible opinion of you," he said,
"ever since I discovered what cowards you are, but I had no idea that you were so ungrateful, selfish, and cruel as I now find you to be. Here was your Minor Canon, who labored day and night for your good, and thought of nothing else but how he might benefit you and make you happy; and as soon as you imagine yourselves threatened with danger-for well I know you are dreadfully afraid of me-you send him off. caring not whether he returns or perishes, hoping thereby to save yourselves. Now, I had conceived a great iiking for that young man, and had intended, in a day or two, to go and look him up. But I have changed my mind about him. I shall go and find him, but I shall send him back here to live among you, and I intend that he shall enjoy the reward of his labor and his sacrifices. Go, some of you, to the officers of the church, who so cowardly ran away when 1 first came here. and tell them never to return to this town under penalty of death. And if, when your Minor Canon comes back to you, you do not bow yourselves before him, put him in the highest place among you, and serve and honor him all his life, beware of my terrible vengeance! There were only two good things in this town: the Minor Canon and the stone image of myself over your church door. One of these you have sent away, and the other I shall carry away myself."
With these words he dismissed the meeting; and it was time, for the end of his tail had become so hot that there was danger of its setting fire to the building.
The next morning me Griffin came to the church, and tearing the stone image of himself from its fastenings over the great door, he grasped it with his powerful forelegs and flew up into the air. Then, after hovering over the town for a moment, he gave his tail an angry shake, and took up his flight to the dreadful wilds. When he reached this desolate region, he set the stone griffin upon a ledge of a rock which rose in front of the dismal cave he called his home. There the image occupied a position somewhat similar to that it had had over the church door; and the Griffin, panting with the exertion of carrying such an enormous load to so great a distance, lay down upon the ground, and regarded it with much satisfaction. When he felt somewhat rested he went to look for the Minor Canon. He found the young man, weak and half starved, lying under the shadow of a rock. After picking him up and carrying him to his cave, the Griffin flew away to a distant marsh, where he procured some roots and herbs which he well knew were strengthening and beneficial to man, though he had never tasted them himself. After eating these the Minor Canon was greatly revived, and sat up and listened while the Griffin told him what had happened in the town.
"Do you know," said the monster, when he had finished,
"dial I have had, and still have, a great liking for you?"
"i am very glad to hear it," said the Minor Canon, with his usual politeness.
"I am not at all sure that you would be," said the Griffin,
"if you thoroughly understood the state of the case, but we will not consider that now. If some things were different, other things would be otherwise. I have been so enraged by discovering the manner in which you have been treated that I have determined that you shall at last enjoy the rewards and honors to which you arc entitled. Lie down and have a good sleep, and then I will take you back to the town."
As he heard the words, a look of trouble came over the young man's face.
"You need not give yourself any anxiety," said the Griffin, "about my return to the town. I shall not remain there.
Now that I have that admirable likeness of myself in front of my cave, where 1 can sit at my leisure and gaze upon its noble features and magnificent proportions, I have no wish to see that abode of cowardly and selfish people."
The Minor Canon, relieved from his fears, lay back, and dropped into a doze; and when he was sound asleep, the Griffin took him up and carried him back to the town. He arrived just before daybreak, and putting the young man gently on the grass in the little field where he himself used to rest, the monster, without having been seen by any of the people, flew back to his home.
When the Minor Canon made his appearance in the morning among the citizens, the enthusiasm and cordiality with which he was received were truly wonderful. He was taken to a house which had been occupied by one of the banished high officers of the place, and every one was anxious to do all that could be done for his health and comfort. The people crowded into the church when he held services, so that the three old women who used to be his week-day congregation could not get the best seats, which they had always been in the habit of taking; and the parents of the bad children determined to reform them at home, in order that he might be spared the trouble of keeping up his former school. The Minor Canon was appointed to the highest office of the old church, and before he died he became a bishop.
During the First years after his return from the dreadful wilds, the people of the town looked up to him as a man to whom they were bound to do honor and reverence. But they often, also. looked up to the sky to see if there were any signs of the Griffin coming back. However, in the course of lime they learned to honor and reverence their former Minor Canon without the fear of being punished if they did not do so.
But they need never have been afraid of the Griffin. The autumnal equinox day came round, and the monster ate nothing. If he could not have the Minor Canon, he did not care for anything. So, lying down with his eyes fixed upon the great stone griffin, he gradually declined, and died. it was a good thing for some of the people of the town that they did not know this.
If you should ever visit me old town, you would still see the little griffins on the sides of the church, but the great stone griffin that was over the door is gone.
Kragen
The sea is a natural repository of enormous beasts, since the buoyancy of water largely neutralizes gravity. The blue whale with a top mark of 150 tons is far larger than any land creature thai ever lived; larger even than the largest dinosaurs.
Furthermore, water, in depths greater than a few yards, is opaque, so who knows what might be hidden in the deep. Even today, the relatively small Loch Ness in Scotland is thought to harbor a "monster," while the ocean itself is supposed to contain "sea serpents" of all kinds.
The Norwegians had legends of an enormous sea monster they called the kraken (is this another form of the Greek drakon? / wonder). It was pictured as an enormous round creature, possibly a mile and a half in circumference. To its rim were attached long tentacles, with which it could seize and pull under even the largest ships. When it submerged suddenly, it left a whirlpool in its wake, and sometimes whirlpools themselves were referred to as krakens.
In 1752, a Norwegian bishop, Erik Pontoppidan, published a Natural History of Norway in which the kraken was popularized.
There may be a germ of truth in even the wildest legend, however. The kraken sounds tike a large and monstrous octopus, and. indeed, in recent times the "giant squid" had been discovered. It does not normally come to the surface but it is the preferred food of the sperm whale, and dying squid that have had a fight with a sperm whale come to the surface on occasion. They are far, far smaller than the kraken, but one must allow for the exaggerations of legend.
In the following story, we have a large sea monster. It is not a giant squid. It is, rather, extraterrestrial, but the author indicates its conceptual origin in its name. which is almost kraken.
The Kragen
by Jack Vance
Chapter I
Among the people of the Floats caste distinctions were fast losing their old-time importance. The Anarchists and Procurers had disappeared altogether; intercaste marriages were by no means uncommon, especially when they involved castes of approximately the same social status. Society of course was not falling into chaos; the Bezzlers and the Incendiaries still maintained their traditional aloofness; the Advertisermen still could not evade a subtle but nonetheless general disesteem, and where the castes were associated with a craft or trade, they functioned with undiminished effectivesness. The Swindlers comprised the vast majority of those who fished from coracles; Blackguards constructed all the sponge-arbors in every lagoon; the Hoodwinks completely monopolized the field of hood-winking. This last relationship always excited the curiosity of the young, who would inquire, "Which first: the Hoodwinks or hood-winking?" To which the elders customarily replied, "When the Ship of Space discharged our ancestors upon these blessed floats, there were four Hoodwinks among the Eighty-three. Later, when the towers were built and the lamps established, there were hoods to wink, and it seemed nothing less than apposite that the Hoodwinks should occupy themselves at the trade. It may well be that matters stood so in the Outer Wildness, before the Escape. It seems likely. There were undoubtedly lamps to be flashed and hoods to be winked. Of course there is much we do not know, much concerning which the dicta are silent.''