Peering in the direction of the sound, Dante descries what he takes for lofty towers, until Virgil informs him that when they draw nearer still he will discover they are giants standing in the lowest pit but looming far above it in the mist.

Ere long Dante stares in wonder at chained giants seventy feet tall, whom Virgil designates as Nimrod, Ephialtes, and Antaeus.
As with circling round Of turrets, Montereggion crowns his walls; E'en thus the shore, encompassing the abyss, Was turreted with giants, half their length Uprearing, horrible, whom Jove from heaven Yet threatens, when his muttering thunder rolls.
Antaeus being unchained, Virgil persuades him to lift them both down in the hollow of his hands to the next level, "where guilt is at its depth." Although Dante's terror in the giant's grip is almost overwhelming, he is relieved when his feet touch the ground once more, and he watches with awe as the giant straightens up again like the mast of a huge ship.
"Yet in the abyss, That Lucifer with Judas low ingulfs, Lightly he placed us; nor, there leaning, stay'd; But rose, as in a barque the stately mast." _Canto XXXII._ Confessing that it is no easy task to describe the bottom of the universe which he has now reached, Dante relates how perpendicular rocks reached up on all sides as far as he could see.

He is gazing upward in silent wonder, when Virgil suddenly cautions him to beware lest he tread upon some unfortunate.

Gazing down at his feet, Dante then becomes aware that he is standing on a frozen lake, wherein stick fast innumerable sinners, whose heads alone emerge, eased in ice owing to the tears constantly flowing down their cheeks.
Seeing two so close together that their very hair seems to mingle, Dante, on inquiring, learns they are two brothers who slew each other in an inheritance quarrel, for this is Caina, the region where the worst murderers are punished, and, like every other part of the Inferno, it is crowded with figures.
"A thousand visages Then mark'd, I, which the keen and eager cold Had shaped into a doggish grin; whence creeps A shivering horror o'er me, at the thought Of those frore shallows." It happens that, while following his guide over the ice, Dante's foot strikes a projecting head.

Permission being granted him to question its owner, Dante, because he at first refuses to speak, threatens to pull every hair out of his head, and actually gives him a few hard tugs.