Once upon a time, there was a king who had a large forest near his palace, and in this forest there were all kinds of wild animals. One day he sent out a huntsman to shoot a deer, but the huntsman didn’t come back. “Maybe he had an accident,” the king said, so he sent out two more huntsmen to look for him, but they didn’t come back either. On the third day, he sent for all his huntsmen and said, “Search the whole forest, and don’t stop until you’ve found them.” But none of the men came back, and of the many dogs they had taken with them, not one was ever seen again.

From that time on, no one dared to go into the forest. It lay there in deep stillness and solitude, and no one saw any of its creatures except for an eagle or a hawk now and then flying over it. Things went on like this for many years.

Then one day a huntsman appeared before the king, looking for a job, and offered to go into the dangerous forest. “It’s not safe in there,” the king said. “I’m afraid you’d do no better than the others, and you’d never come out again.”

“Your Majesty,” the huntsman said, “I will go in at my own risk. I don’t know the meaning of fear.”

So the huntsman took his dog and went into the forest. Soon the dog picked up the scent of some animal and began to follow it, but after it had run a few steps it came to a deep pool and stopped. A large bare arm rose out of the water, grabbed the dog, and pulled it under.

The huntsman was appalled; it was his favorite dog, and he loved it very much. But he had a job to do, and he was determined to do it. “There is a huge, dangerous man at the bottom of the pool,” he thought. “He can breathe underwater, and it will be hard to capture him by diving in. The only sensible way is to drain the pool.” So he hurried off and brought back thirty men with buckets.

They worked for three days, and when they got close to the bottom, they found a wild man sitting there. He was nine feet tall, his body was brown like rusty iron, and his hair hung over his face down to his knees. The other men were terrified, but the huntsman didn’t hesitate: he took a lasso, threw it over the wild man, pulled it tight, and then commanded the others to bind the man’s hands and feet. The wild man didn’t resist; he seemed almost glad to be captured.