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hundred years, but I thought he would heave it up. If I had not clung like an ape, he would have shaken me out with the twigs and birds’ nests. The scared cow added her bawl to the bull’s great bellow. But the stout rope held, and at last he tired. He had been caught before in the Cretan pastures, and no great harm had come of it. He stood; and I dropped the bull-net over him.
    And now I was alone no longer. It was as if I had sown the furrows to bring forth men. They swarmed about me; they must have been creeping up while I was in the tree. The net’s edge was hardly wide enough for the grasping hands. I climbed down and showed them how to catch his feet in it so that a pull would trip him. They would have killed him then with spears and cleavers, working off their fear, as small men do. I was glad I could tell them he had been vowed to Apollo; he did not deserve so base a death.
    I made them all wait, and went on alone, leading the heifer. I had a debt to pay. She was so frail, I did not want her to learn who I was from anyone but me. So I knocked, but got no answer, and went inside. She was lying below the window; when I picked her up, she had no more weight than a dead bird. She had spent her last breath in care for me, watching my struggle; I hoped she had lived to see me win.
    I sacrifice for her every year, at the tomb I built for her where the cottage stood; and the servant I promised her has grown gray serving her shrine. The folk of Marathon offer too, for they think she makes their cattle fruitful; so she will not be forgotten after my death.
    The bull-girls lie close by; I ordered them a warriors’ barrow and buried them on one bier. The kinsfolk murmured, till I lost patience and gave them some of my mind. They held their peace after that.
    I went back to the bull. The people were still in mortal dread of him, and I said I would stay with him till he was offered to the god. I saw him stoutly haltered either side, then mounted his neck and rode him into Athens. He did not mind the shouting and thrown flowers; he was used to those in Crete; so he went consenting to the god who owned him, looking to the last for the bull-field and the good old days. It was I who knew they would never come again.
    But when he had breathed his strong soul upward, and I heard the paean, my soul lifted with eagles’ wings. I had met and mastered the evil of my fate; I was King indeed.

IV
    W E FOUGHT THE WAR in Crete before the summer broke and the streams washed down the mountains into the rich plains. I led there two fleets of warriors; the second came from King Pittheus of Troizen, my mother’s father, who had reared me as a boy before my father owned me. He was too old to go himself, but he sent a troop of his sons and grandsons, and good men I found them, well worth their share of the spoils. I knew the Cretan country hardly better than they, having lived out my year a captive of the Labyrinth; but the native serfs I knew, the land’s first children, and they knew me: first as the bull-leaper they used to bet on, then as the man who led them when they rose. They thought I would give them more justice than their half-Greek lords, so they helped me every way. And if you go even now to Crete, you will hear them say that I kept faith with them.
    Before the half-fallen, patched-up Labyrinth, stained black with fire, still stood the porch of the Bull Court with its crimson columns and its great red bull charging across the wall. In sight of it we fought the clinching battle for the Knossos plain. In the mountain lands to the east they are wild as foxes; it is freedom they want, not power. Minos ruled them lightly and so do I. But that Crete which had been lord of the seas and islands was in my hand; and it was not a bloody war. They were sick for a master, having been governed from the Labyrinth a thousand years. Fallen to petty chiefdoms, they had thought chaos come again. It was a lesson I took to heart; it would shame me, not