ls, whom Charon keeps,
With their companions, plunged in boiling deeps.

XXXVII
A spacious table in mid cavern stood,
Two palms in thickness, in its figure square;
Propt on one huge, ill fashioned food and rude,
Which held the thief and all who harboured there.
Even with such freedom as his dart of wood
We mark the nimble Spaniard launch through air,
The heavy table Roland seized and threw,
Where, crowded close together, stood the crew.

XXXVIII
One had his belly crushed, and one his breast;
Another head or arm, or leg and thigh.
Whence some were slain outright, and maimed the rest,
While he who was least injured sought to fly.
'Tis so sometimes, with heavy stone oppressed,
A knot of slimy snakes is seen to lie,
With battered heads and loins where, winter done,
They lick their scales, rejoicing in the sun.

XXXIX
I could not say what mischiefs these offend;
One dies, and one departs without its tail;
Another crippled cannot move an-end,
And wriggling wreathes its length without avail:
While this, whom more propitious saints befriend,
Safe through the grass drags off its slimy trail.
Dire was the stroke; yet should no wonder breed,
Since good Orlando's arm achieved the deed.

XL
Those whom the board had little maimed or nought,
(Turpin says there were seven) in craven wise,
Their safety in their feet, yet vainly, sought;
For to the cavern's door Orlando hies.
And having them without resistance caught,
Fast with a rope their hands behind them ties;
A rope, which in the cavern on the ground,
Convenient for his purpose he had found.

XLI
He after drags them bound without the cave,
Where an old service-tree its shadow throws.
Orlando lops the branches with his glaive,
And hangs the thieves, a banquet for the crows:
Nor chain and crook for such a deed did crave:
For ready hooks the tree itself bestows,
To purge the world; where by the chin up-hung,
These, on the branches, bold Orlando strung.

XLII
The ancient woman, the assassin's friend,
Escapes when she perceives that all are dead,
And, threading that green labyrinth without end,
Laments, and plucks the hair from off her head,
By fear impelled, through paths which sore offend
Her feet, till she, beside a river's bed,
Encounters with a warrior: but to say
Who was the stranger champion I delay;

XLIII
And turn to her, who to the count a