Various frightful omens of evil then made their appearance.  The welkin was covered with flights of vultures and Kankas during that terrific encounter between Bhima and Karna.  Then Karna struck Bhima with twenty arrows, and quickly pierced the latter’s charioteer also with five.  Smiling the while, the mighty and active Bhima then, in that battle, quickly sped at Karna four and sixty arrows.  Then Karna, O king, sped four shafts at him.  Bhima, by means of his straight shafts, cut them into many fragments, O king, displaying his lightness of hand.  Then Karna covered him with dense showers of arrows.  Thus covered by Karna, the mighty son of Pandu, however, cut off Karna’s bow at the handle and then pierced Karna with ten straight arrows.  The Suta’s son then, that mighty car-warrior of terrible deeds, taking up another bow and stringing it quickly, pierced Bhima in that battle (with many shafts).  Then Bhima, excited with rage, struck the Suta’s son with great force on the chest with three straight shafts.  With those arrows sticking at his breast, Karna looked beautiful, O bull of Bharata’s race, like a mountain with three tall summits.  Thus pierced with mighty shafts, blood began to flow from his wounds, like torrents of liquid red-chalk down the breast of a mountain.  Afflicted with those shafts shot with great force, Karna became agitated a little.  Fixing an arrow then on his bow, he pierced Bhima, again, O sire!  And once more he began to shoot arrows by hundreds and thousands.  Suddenly shrouded with shafts by that firm bowman, viz., Karna, the son of Pandu, smiling the while, cut off Karna’s bow-string.  And then with a broad-headed arrow, he despatched Karna’s charioteer to the abode of Yama.  And that mighty car-warrior, viz., Bhima, deprived the four steeds also of Karna of their lives.  The mighty car-warrior Karna then speedily jumping down, O king, from his steedless car, mounted the car of Vrishasena.  The valiant Bhimasena then, having vanquished Karna in battle, uttered a loud shout deep as the roar of the clouds.  Hearing that roar, O Bharata, Yudhishthira became highly gratified, knowing that Karna had been vanquished by Bhimasena.  And the combatants of the Pandava army blew their conchs from every side, Their enemies, viz., thy warriors, hearing that noise, roared loudly.  Arjuna stretched Gandiva, and Krishna blew Panchajanya.  Drowning, however, all those sounds, the noise made by the roaring Bhima, was, O king, heard by all the combatants, O sire!  Then those two warriors, viz., Karna, and Bhima, each struck the other with straight shafts.  The son of Radha, however, shot shafts mildly, but the son of Pandu shot his with great force.’”

SECTION CXXIX