marvellous to tell, and wraps the whole place in pitchy 25
darkness, blotting out all prospect from the eyes, and in
the depth of the cave masses a smothering night of blended
blackness and fire. The rage of Alcides brooked not this:
headlong he dashed through the flame, where the smoke
surges thickest and the vast cavern seethes with billows 30
of black vapour. Here while Cacus in the heart of the
gloom is vomiting his helpless fires he seizes him, twines
his limbs with his own, and in fierce embrace compresses
his strangled eyeballs and his throat now bloodless and