The Iron Man by Ted Hughes Page B

giant black figure, taller than a house, black and towering in the twilight, with green headlamp eyes. The Iron Man! There he stood on the cliff-top, looking inland. Hogarth began to run. He ran and ran. Home. Home. The Iron Man had come back.
    So he got home at last and gasping for breath he told his dad. An Iron Man! An Iron Man! A giant!
    His father frowned. His mother grew pale. His little sister began to cry.
    His father took down his double-barrelled gun. He believed his son. He went out. He locked the door. He got in his car. He drove to the next farm.
    But that farmer laughed. He was a fat, red man, with a fat, red-mouthed laugh. When he stopped laughing, his eyes were red too. An Iron Man? Nonsense, he said.
    So Hogarth’s father got back in his car. Now it was dark and it had begun to rain. He drove to the next farm.
    That farmer frowned. He believed. Tomorrow, he said, we must see what he is, this iron man. His feet will have left tracks in the earth.
    So Hogarth’s father again got back into his car. But as he turned the car in the yard, he saw a strange thing in the headlamps. Half a tractor lay there, just half, chopped clean off, the other half missing. He got out of his car and the other farmer came to look too. The tractor had been bitten off – there were big teeth-marks in the steel.
    No explanation! The two men looked at each other. They were puzzled and afraid. What could have bitten the tractor in two? There, in the yard, in the rain, in the night, while they had been talking inside the house.
    The farmer ran in and bolted his door.
    Hogarth’s father jumped into his car and drove off into the night and the rain as fast as he could, homeward.
    The rain poured down. Hogarth’s father drove hard. The headlights lit up the road and bushes.
    Suddenly – two headlamps in a tall treetop at theroadside ahead. Headlamps in a treetop? How?
    Hogarth’s father slowed, peering up to see what the lights might be, up there in the treetop.
    As he slowed, a giant iron foot came down in the middle of the road, a foot as big as a single bed. And the headlamps came down closer. And a giant hand reached down towards the windshield.

    The Iron Man!
    Hogarth’s father put on speed, he aimed his car at the foot.
    Crash! He knocked the foot out of the way.
    He drove on, faster and faster. And behind him, on the road, a clanging clattering boom went up, as if an iron skyscraper had collapsed. The iron giant, with his foot knocked from under him, had toppled over.
    And so Hogarth’s father got home safely.
    BUT
    Next morning all the farmers were shouting with anger. Where were their tractors? Their earth-diggers? Their ploughs? Their harrows? From every farm in the region, all the steel and iron farm machinery had gone. Where to? Who had stolen it all?
    There was a clue. Here and there lay half a wheel, or half an axle, or half a mudguard, carved with giant toothmarks where it had been bitten off. How had it been bitten off? Steel bitten off?
    What had happened?
    There was another clue.
    From farm to farm, over the soft soil of the fields, went giant footprints, each one the size of a single bed.
    The farmers, in a frightened, silent, amazed crowd, followed the footprints. And at every farm the footprints visited, all the metal machinery had disappeared .
    Finally, the footprints led back up to the top ofthe cliff, where the little boy had seen the Iron Man appear the night before, when he was fishing. The footprints led right to the cliff-top.
    And all the way down the cliff were torn marks on the rocks, where a huge iron body had slid down. Below, the tide was in. The grey, empty, moving tide. The Iron Man had gone back into the sea.
    SO
    The furious farmers began to shout. The Iron Man had stolen all their machinery. Had he eaten it? Anyway, he had taken it. It had gone. So what if he came again? What would he take next time? Cows? Houses? People?
    They would have to do something.
    They couldn’t call in the police or