nce in his physical abilities, Beowulf boasts to Unferth and later that evening, encounters Grendel, "The captain of evil discovered himself in a handgrip harder than anything he had ever encountered in any man on the face of the earth, Every bone in his body quailed and recoiled, but he could not escape. He was desperate to flee to his den and hide with the devil's litter, for in all his days he had never been clamped or cornered like this ... a God-cursed scream and strain of catastrophe, the howl of the loser, the lament of the hell-serf keening his wound. He was overwhelmed, manacled tight by the man who of all men was foremost and strongest in the days of his life." (Beowulf 51
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