rince. At length the
creature appeared, in form a man of giant stature, but with the horned
head and huge mouth of a bull.

Battle at once began between the prince and the brute. It soon ended.
Springing agilely behind the ravening monster, Theseus, with a swinging
stroke of his blade, cut off one of its legs at the knee. As the
man-brute fell prone, and lay bellowing with pain, a thrust through the
back reached its heart, and all peril from the Minotaur was at an end.

This victory gained, the task of Theseus was easy. The thread led back
to the entrance. By aid of this clue the door of escape was quickly
gained. Waiting until night, the hostages left the dreaded Labyrinth
under cover of the darkness. Ariadne was in waiting, the ship was
secretly gained, and the rescued Athenians with their fair companion
sailed away, unknown to the king.

But Theseus proved false to the maiden to whom he owed his life.
Stopping at the island of Naxos, which was sacred to Dionysus (or
Bacchus), the god of wine, he had a dream in which the god bade him to
desert Ariadne and sail away. This the faithless swain did, leaving the
weeping maiden deserted on the island. Legend goes on to tell us that
the despair of the lamenting maiden ended in the sleep of exhaustion,
and that while sleeping Dionysus found her, and made her his wife. As
for the dream of Theseus, it was one of those convenient excuses which
traitors to love never lack.

Meanwhile, Theseus and his companions sailed on over the summer sea.
Reaching the isle of Delos, he offered a sacrifice to Apollo in
gratitude for his escape, and there he, and the merry youths and maidens
with him, danced a dance called the Geranus, whose mazy twists and turns
imitated those of the Labyrinth.

But the faithless swain was not to escape punishment for his base
desertion of Ariadne. He had arranged with his father AEgeus that if he
escaped the Minotaur he would hoist white sails in the ship on his
return. If he failed, the ship would still wear the black canvas with
which she had set out on her errand of woe.

The aged king awaited the returning ship on a high rock that overlooked
the sea. At length it hove in sight, the sails appeared, but--they were
black. With broken heart the father cast himself from the rock into the
sea,--which ever since has been called, from his name, the AEgean Sea.
Theseus, absorbed perhaps in thoughts of the abandoned Ariadne, perhaps
of new adventures, had for