here.
Before reaching the mountain-top, these three black smoke-wreaths
mingled themselves into one. The cavern was almost directly beneath
the winged horse and his rider, at the distance of about a thousand
feet. The smoke, as it crept heavily upward, had an ugly, sulphurous,
stifling scent, which caused Pegasus to snort and Bellerophon to
sneeze. So disagreeable was it to the marvelous steed (who was
accustomed to breathe only the purest air), that he waved his wings,
and shot half a mile out of the range of this offensive vapor.

But, on looking behind him, Bellerophon saw something that induced him
first to draw the bridle, and then to turn Pegasus about. He made a
sign, which the winged horse understood, and sunk slowly through the
air, until his hoofs were scarcely more than a man's height above the
rocky bottom of the valley. In front, as far off as you could throw a
stone, was the cavern's mouth, with the three smoke-wreaths oozing out
of it. And what else did Bellerophon behold there?

There seemed to be a heap of strange and terrible creatures curled up
within the cavern. Their bodies lay so close together, that
Bellerophon could not distinguish them apart; but, judging by their
heads, one of these creatures was a huge snake, the second a fierce
lion, and the third an ugly goat. The lion and the goat were asleep;
the snake was broad awake, and kept staring around him with a great
pair of fiery eyes. But--and this was the most wonderful part of the
matter--the three spires of smoke evidently issued from the nostrils
of these three heads! So strange was the spectacle, that, though
Bellerophon had been all along expecting it, the truth did not
immediately occur to him, that here was the terrible three-headed
Chimaera. He had found out the Chimaera's cavern. The snake, the lion,
and the goat, as he supposed them to be, were not three separate
creatures, but one monster!

The wicked, hateful thing! Slumbering as two thirds of it were, it
still held, in its abominable claws, the remnant of an unfortunate
lamb,--or possibly (but I hate to think so) it was a dear little
boy,--which its three mouths had been gnawing, before two of them fell
asleep!

All at once, Bellerophon started as from a dream, and knew it to be
the Chimaera. Pegasus seemed to know it, at the same instant, and sent
forth a neigh, that sounded like the call of a trumpet to battle. At
this sound the three heads reared themselves erect, and belch