in.

At last she sighed and said, 'The dawn is near--farewell; the gods be
with you. I give you the watchword of the night, that you may pass the
sentinels if you come forth alive,' and she told him the word. Then she
opened the door and gave him the key, and the old nurse gave him the
lamp which she carried, and some food to take with him.

VII

THE SLAYING OF THE MINOTAUR

Theseus first fastened one end of his coil of string to a pointed rock,
and then began to look about him. The labyrinth was dark, and he slowly
walked, holding the string, down the broadest path, from which others
turned off to right or left. He counted his steps, and he had taken near
three thousand steps when he saw the pale sky showing in a small circle
cut in the rocky roof, above his head, and he saw the fading stars.
Sheer walls of rock went up on either hand of him, a roof of rock was
above him, but in the roof was this one open place, across which were
heavy bars. Soon the daylight would come.

Theseus set the lamp down on a rock behind a corner, and he waited,
thinking, at a place where a narrow dark path turned at right angles to
the left. Looking carefully round he saw a heap of bones, not human
bones, but skulls of oxen and sheep, hoofs of oxen, and shank bones.
'This,' he thought, 'must be the place where the food of the Minotaur is
let down to him from above. They have not Athenian youths and maidens to
give him every day! Beside his feeding place I will wait.' Saying this
to himself, he rose and went round the corner of the dark narrow path
cut in the rock to the left. He made his own breakfast, from the food
that Ariadne had given him, and it occurred to his mind that probably
the Minotaur might also be thinking of breakfast time.

He sat still, and from afar away within he heard a faint sound, like the
end of the echo of a roar, and he stood up, drew his long sword, and
listened keenly. The sound came nearer and louder, a strange sound, not
deep like the roar of a bull, but more shrill and thin. Theseus laughed
silently. A monster with the head and tongue of a bull, but with the
chest of a man, could roar no better than that! The sounds came nearer
and louder, but still with the thin sharp tone in them. Theseus now took
from his bosom the phial of gold that Medea had given him in Athens when
she told him about the Minotaur. He removed the stopper, and held his
thumb over the mouth of the phial, and grasped his long swo