raised the
club of Periphetes aloft in his hand.

Well it was for him that he raised the iron club, for, just as he lifted
it, there flew out from the thicket something long, and slim, and black,
that fluttered above his head for a moment, and then a loop at the end
of it fell round the head of Theseus, and was drawn tight with a sudden
jerk. But the loop fell also above and round the club, which Theseus
held firm, pushing away the loop, and so pushed it off that it did not
grip his neck. Drawing with his left hand his bronze dagger, he cut
through the leather lasso with one stroke, and bounded into the bushes
from which it had flown. Here he found a huge man, clad in the skin of a
lion, with its head fitting to his own like a mask. The man lifted a
club made of the trunk of a young pine tree, with a sharp-edged stone
fastened into the head of it like an axe-head. But, as the monster
raised his long weapon it struck on a strong branch of a tree above him,
and was entangled in the boughs, so that Theseus had time to thrust the
head of the iron club full in his face, with all his force, and the
savage fell with a crash like a falling oak among the bracken. He was
one of the last of an ancient race of savage men, who dwelt in Greece
before the Greeks, and he fought as they had fought, with weapons of
wood and stone.

Theseus dropped with his knees on the breast of the Pine-Bender, and
grasped his hairy throat with both his hands, not to strangle him, but
to hold him sure and firm till he came to himself again. When at last
the monster opened his eyes, Theseus gripped his throat the harder, and
spoke, 'Pine-Bender, for thee shall pines be bent. But I am a man and
not a monster, and thou shalt die a clean death before thy body is torn
in twain to be the last feast of thy vultures.' Then, squeezing the
throat of the wretch with his left hand, he drew the sword of Aegeus, and
drove it into the heart of Sinis the Pine-Bender, and he gave a cry like
a bull's, and his soul fled from him. Then Theseus bound the body of the
savage with his own leather cord, and, bending down the tops of two pine
trees, he did to the corpse as Sinis had been wont to do to living men.

Lastly he cleaned the sword-blade carefully, wiping it with grass and
bracken, and thrusting it to the hilt through the soft fresh ground
under the trees, and so went on his way till he came to a little stream
that ran towards the sea from the crest of the hill above