Tanglewood Tales Read Online Free PDF Page B

glided
between the headlands of the port, and the giant resumed his march. In
a few moments, this wondrous sentinel was far away, flashing in the
distant sunshine, and revolving with immense strides round the island of
Crete, as it was his never-ceasing task to do.
    No sooner had they entered the harbor than a party of the guards of King
Minos came down to the water side, and took charge of the fourteen young
men and damsels. Surrounded by these armed warriors, Prince Theseus
and his companions were led to the king's palace, and ushered into his
presence. Now, Minos was a stern and pitiless king. If the figure that
guarded Crete was made of brass, then the monarch, who ruled over it,
might be thought to have a still harder metal in his breast, and might
have been called a man of iron. He bent his shaggy brows upon the poor
Athenian victims. Any other mortal, beholding their fresh and tender
beauty, and their innocent looks, would have felt himself sitting on
thorns until he had made every soul of them happy by bidding them
go free as the summer wind. But this immitigable Minos cared only
to examine whether they were plump enough to satisfy the Minotaur's
appetite. For my part, I wish he himself had been the only victim; and
the monster would have found him a pretty tough one.
    One after another, King Minos called these pale, frightened youths and
sobbing maidens to his footstool, gave them each a poke in the ribs
with his sceptre (to try whether they were in good flesh or no), and
dismissed them with a nod to his guards. But when his eyes rested on
Theseus, the king looked at him more attentively, because his face was
calm and brave.
    "Young man," asked he, with his stern voice, "are you not appalled at
the certainty of being devoured by this terrible Minotaur?"
    "I have offered my life in a good cause," answered Theseus, "and
therefore I give it freely and gladly. But thou, King Minos, art thou
not thyself appalled, who, year after year, hast perpetrated this
dreadful wrong, by giving seven innocent youths and as many maidens to
be devoured by a monster? Dost thou not tremble, wicked king, to turn
shine eyes inward on shine own heart? Sitting there on thy golden
throne, and in thy robes of majesty, I tell thee to thy face, King
Minos, thou art a more hideous monster than the Minotaur himself!"
    "Aha! do you think me so?" cried the king, laughing in his cruel way.
"To-morrow, at breakfast time, you shall have an opportunity of judging
which is the greater monster, the Minotaur or the king! Take them away,
guards; and let this free-spoken youth be the Minotaur's first morsel."
    Near the king's throne (though I had no time to tell you so before)
stood his daughter Ariadne. She was a beautiful and tender-hearted
maiden, and looked at these poor doomed captives with very different
feelings from those of the iron-breasted King Minos. She really wept
indeed, at the idea of how much human happiness would be needlessly
thrown away, by giving so many young people, in the first bloom and
rose blossom of their lives, to be eaten up by a creature who, no doubt,
would have preferred a fat ox, or even a large pig, to the plumpest of
them. And when she beheld the brave, spirited figure of Prince Theseus
bearing himself so calmly in his terrible peril, she grew a hundred
times more pitiful than before. As the guards were taking him away,
she flung herself at the king's feet, and besought him to set all the
captives free, and especially this one young man.
    "Peace, foolish girl!" answered King Minos.
    "What hast thou to do with an affair like this? It is a matter of state
policy, and therefore quite beyond thy weak comprehension. Go water thy
flowers, and think no more of these Athenian caitiffs, whom the Minotaur
shall as certainly eat up for breakfast as I will eat a partridge for my
supper."
    So saying, the king looked cruel enough to devour Theseus and all the
rest of the captives himself, had there been no Minotaur to save him