Soon as the youth approach’d the fatal place, He saw his servants breathless on the grass; The scaly foe amid their corpse he view’d, Basking at ease and feasting in their blood. “Such friends,” he cries, “deserved a longer date; But Cadmus will revenge, or share their fate.” Then heaved a stone, and rising to the throw, He sent it in a whirlwind at the foe; A lower, assaulted by so rude a stroke, With all its lofty battlements had shook; But nothing here the unwieldy rock avails, Rebounding harmless from the plaited scales, That, firmly join’d, preserved him from a wound, With native armour crusted all around. With more success the dart unerring flew, Which at his back the raging warrior threw: Amid the plaited scales it took its course, And in the spinal marrow spent its force. The monster hiss’d aloud, and raged in vain, And writhed his body to and fro with pain; He bit the dart, and wrench’d the wood away; The point still buried in the marrow lay; And now his rage, increasing with his pain, Reddens his eyes and beats in every vein;