"Ah, wretch of a human being! I'll stick my horns through you,
and toss you fifty feet high, and eat you up the moment you
come down."

"Come on, then, and try it!" was all that Theseus deigned to
reply; for he was far too magnanimous to assault his enemy with
insolent language.

Without more words on either side, there ensued the most awful
fight between Theseus and the Minotaur that ever happened
beneath the sun or moon. I really know not how it might have
turned out, if the monster, in his first headlong rush against
Theseus, had not missed him, by a hair's breadth, and broken
one of his horns short off against the stone wall. On this
mishap, he bellowed so intolerably that a part of the labyrinth
tumbled down, and all the inhabitants of Crete mistook the
noise for an uncommonly heavy thunder storm. Smarting with the
pain, he galloped around the open space in so ridiculous a way
that Theseus laughed at it, long afterwards, though not
precisely at the moment. After this, the two antagonists stood
valiantly up to one another, and fought, sword to horn, for a
long while. At last, the Minotaur made a run at Theseus, grazed
his left side with his horn, and flung him down; and thinking
that he had stabbed him to the heart, he cut a great caper in
the air, opened his bull mouth from ear to ear, and prepared to
snap his head off. But Theseus by this time had leaped up, and
caught the monster off his guard. Fetching a sword stroke at
him with all his force, he hit him fair upon the neck, and made
his bull head skip six yards from his human body, which fell
down flat upon the ground.