“Never mind, my brave Pegasus!” cried Bellerophon.  “With another stroke like that we will surely stop either its hissing or its roaring.”

And again he shook the bridle.  Dashing aslant-wise as before, the winged horse made another arrow-flight toward the Chimera, and Bellerophon aimed another downright stroke at one of the two remaining heads as he shot by.  But this time neither he nor Pegasus escaped so well as at first.  With one of its claws the Chimera had given the young man a deep scratch in his shoulder, and had slightly damaged the left wing of the flying steed with the other.  On his part, Bellerophon had mortally wounded the lion’s head of the monster, insomuch that it now hung downward, with its fire almost extinguished, and sending out gasps of thick black smoke.  The snake’s head, however (which was the only one now left), was twice as fierce and venomous as ever before.  It belched forth shoots of fire five hundred yards long, and emitted hisses so loud, so harsh, and so ear-piercing that King Iobates heard them fifty miles off, and trembled till the throne shook under him.

“Well-a-day!” thought the poor king; “the Chimera is certainly coming to devour me.”

Meanwhile Pegasus had again paused in the air and neighed angrily, while sparkles of a pure crystal flame darted out of his eyes.  How unlike the lurid fire of the Chimera!  The aerial steed’s spirit was all aroused, and so was that of Bellerophon.

“Dost thou bleed, my immortal horse?” cried the young man, caring less for his own hurt than for the anguish of this glorious creature that ought never to have tasted pain.  “The execrable Chimera shall pay for this mischief with his last head.”

Then he shook the bridle, shouted loudly and guided Pegasus, not aslantwise as before, but straight at the monster’s hideous front.  So rapid was the onset that it seemed but a dazzle and a flash before Bellerophon was at close gripes with his enemy.

The Chimera by this time, after losing its second head, had got into a red-hot passion of pain and rampant rage.  It so flounced about, half on earth and partly in the air, that it was impossible to say which element it rested upon.  It opened its snake jaws to such an abominable width that Pegasus might almost, I was going to say, have flown right down its throat, wings outspread, rider and all!  At their approach it shot out a tremendous blast of its fiery breath and enveloped Bellerophon and his steed in a perfect atmosphere of flame, singeing the wings of Pegasus, scorching off one whole side of the young man’s ringlets, and making them both far hotter than was comfortable from head to foot.

But this was nothing to what followed.