The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles (20 page)

“Listen, comrades, to me,” Jason said, “while I speak of a strange thing that has befallen me. While I lay by the side of
our ship three nymphs came before me. With light hands they drew away the cloak that wrapped my head. They declared themselves to be the solitary nymphs, the warders, of Libya. Very strange were the words they said to me. When Poseidon’s great horse shall be unloosed, they said, we were to make the mother of us all a recompense, doing for her what she had done for us all. This the nymphs told me to say, but I cannot understand the meaning of their words.”

There were some there who would not have given heed to Jason’s words, deeming them words without meaning. But even as he spoke a wonder came before their eyes. Out of the far-off sea a great horse leaped. Vast he was of size and he had a golden mane. He shook the spray of the sea off his sides and mane. Past them he trampled and away toward the horizon, leaving great tracks in the sand.

Then Nestor spoke rejoicingly. “Behold the great horse! It is the horse that the desert nymphs spoke of, Poseidon’s horse. Even now has the horse been unloosed, and now is the time to do what the nymphs bade us do.

“Who but
Argo
is the mother of us all? She has carried us. Now we must make her a recompense and carry her even as she carried us. With untiring shoulders we must bear
Argo
across this great desert.

“And whither shall we bear her? Whither but along the tracks that Poseidon’s horse has left in the sand! Poseidon’s horse will not go under the earth—once again he will plunge into the sea!”

So Nestor said and the Argonauts saw truth in his saying. Hope came to them again—the hope of leaving that desert and coming to the sea. Surely when they came to the sea again, and spread the sail and held the oars in their hands, their sacred ship would make swift course to their native land!

8
T
he
C
arrying
O
ut of the
A
rgo

W
ITH
the terrible weight of the ship upon their shoulders the Argonauts made their way across the desert, following the tracks of Poseidon’s golden-maned horse. Like a wounded serpent that drags with pain its length along, they went day after day across that limitless land.

A day came when they saw the great tracks of the horse no more. A wind had come up and had covered them with sand. With the mighty weight of the ship upon their shoulders, with the sun beating upon their heads, and with no marks on the desert to guide them, the heroes stood there, and it seemed to them that the blood must gush up and out of their hearts.

Then Zetes and Calais, sons of the North Wind, rose up upon their wings to strive to get sight of the sea. Up, up, they soared. And then as a man sees, or thinks he sees, at the month’s beginning, the moon through a bank of clouds, Zetes and Calais, looking over the measureless land, saw the gleam of water. They shouted to the Argonauts; they marked the way for them, and wearily, but with good hearts, the heroes went upon the way.

They came at last to the shore of what seemed to be a wide inland sea. They set
Argo
down from off their overwearied shoulders and they let her keel take water once more.

All salt and brackish was that water; they dipped their hands into and tasted the salt. Orpheus was able to name the water they had come to; it was that lake that was called after Triton, the son of Nereus, the ancient one of the sea. They set up an altar and they made sacrifices in thanksgiving to the gods.

They had come to water at last, but now they had to seek for other water—for the sweet water that they could drink. All around them they looked, but they saw no sign of a spring. And then they felt a wind blow upon them—a wind that had in it not the dust of the desert, but the fragrance of growing things. Toward where that wind blew from they went.

As they went on they saw a great shape against the sky; they saw mountainous shoulders bowed. Orpheus bade them halt and turn their faces with reverence toward that great shape; for this was Atlas the Titan, the brother of Prometheus, who stood there to hold up the sky on his shoulders.

Then they were near the place that the fragrance had blown from; there was a garden there; the only fence that ran around it was a lattice of silver. “Surely there are springs in the garden,” the Argonauts said. “We will enter this fair garden now and slake our thirst.”

Orpheus bade them walk reverently, for all around them, he said, was sacred ground. This garden was the Garden of the Hesperides that was watched over by the Daughters of the Evening Land. The Argonauts looked through the silver lattice; they saw trees with lovely fruit, and they saw three maidens moving through the garden with watchful eyes. In this garden grew the tree that had the golden apples that Zeus gave to Hera as a wedding gift.

They saw the tree on which the golden apples grew. The maidens went to it and then looked watchfully all around them. They saw the faces of the Argonauts looking through the silver lattice and they cried out, one to the other, and they joined their hands around the tree.

But Orpheus called to them, and the maidens understood the divine speech of Orpheus. He made the Daughters of the
Evening Land know that they who stood before the lattice were men who reverenced the gods, who would not strive to enter the forbidden garden. The maidens came toward them. Beautiful as the singing of Orpheus was their utterance, but what they said was a complaint and a lament.

Their lament was for the dragon Ladon, that dragon with a hundred heads that guarded sleeplessly the tree that had the golden apples. Now that dragon was slain. With arrows that had been dipped in the poison of the Hydra’s blood their dragon, Ladon, had been slain.

The Daughters of the Evening Land sang of how a mortal had come into the garden that they watched over. He had a great bow, and with his arrow he slew the dragon that guarded the golden apples. The golden apples he had taken away; they had come back to the tree they had been plucked from, for no mortal might keep them in his possession. So the maidens sang—Hespere, Eretheis, and Ægle—and they complained that now, unhelped by the hundred-headed dragon, they had to keep guard over the tree.

The Argonauts knew of whom they told the tale—Heracles, their comrade. Would that Heracles were with them now!

The Hesperides told them of Heracles—of how the springs in the garden dried up because of his plucking the golden
apples. He came out of the garden thirsting. Nowhere could he find a spring of water. To yonder great rock he went. He smote it with his foot and water came out in full flow. Then he, leaning on his hands and with his chest upon the ground, drank and drank from the water that flowed from the rifted rock.

The Argonauts looked to where the rock stood. They caught the sound of water. They carried Medea over. And then, company after company, all huddled together, they stooped down and drank their fill of the clear good water. With lips wet with the water they cried to each other, “Heracles! Although he is not with us, in very truth Heracles has saved his comrades from deadly thirst!”

They saw his footsteps printed upon the rocks, and they followed them until they led to the sand where no footsteps stay. Heracles! How glad his comrades would have been if they could have had sight of him then! But it was long ago—before he had sailed with them—that Heracles had been here.

Still hearing their complaint they turned back to the lattice, to where the Daughters of the Evening Land stood. The Daughters of the Evening Land bent their heads to listen to what the Argonauts told one another, and, seeing them bent to listen, Orpheus told a story about one who had gone across the Libyan desert, about one who was a hero like unto Heracles.

Beyond where Atlas stands there is a cave where the strange women, the ancient daughters of Phorcys, live. They have been gray from their birth. They have but one eye and one tooth between them, and they pass the eye and the tooth, one to the other, when they would see or eat. They are called the Graiai, these two sisters.

Up to the cave where they lived a youth once came. He was beardless, and the garb he wore was torn and travel-stained, but he had shapeliness and beauty. In his leathern belt there was an exceedingly bright sword; this sword was not straight like the swords we carry, but it was hooked like a sickle. The strange youth with the bright, strange sword came very quickly and very silently up to the cave where the Graiai lived and looked over a high boulder into it.

One was sitting munching acorns with the single tooth. The other had the eye in her hand. She was holding it to her forehead and looking into the back of the cave. These two ancient women, with their gray hair falling over them like thick fleeces, and with faces that were only forehead and cheeks and nose and mouth, were strange creatures truly. Very silently the youth stood looking at them.

“Sister, sister,” cried the one who was munching acorns, “sister, turn your eye this way. I heard the stir of something.”

The other turned, and with the eye placed against her forehead looked out to the opening of the cave. The youth drew back behind the boulder. “Sister, sister, there is nothing there,” said the one with the eye.

Then she said: “Sister, give me the tooth for I would eat my acorns. Take the eye and keep watch.”

The one who was eating held out the tooth, and the one who was watching held out the eye. The youth darted into the cave. Standing between the eyeless sisters, he took with one hand the tooth and with the other the eye.

“Sister, sister, have you taken the eye?”

“I have not taken the eye. Have you taken the tooth?”

“I have not taken the tooth.”

“Some one has taken the eye, and some one has taken the tooth.”

They stood together, and the youth watched their blinking faces as they tried to discover who had come into the cave, and who had taken the eye and the tooth.

Then they said, screaming together: “Who ever has taken the eye and the tooth from the Graiai, the ancient daughters of Phorcys, may Mother Night smother him.”

The youth spoke. “Ancient daughters of Phorcys,” he said, “Graiai, I would not rob from you. I have come to your cave only to ask the way to a place.”