'Turn your back, and hold your course past the isle of Albion, with the white cliffs, and so keep with the land on your left hand, and the unsailed sea on your right hand, till you mark the pillars of Heracles on your left, then take your course west by south, and a curse on you! Give us our eye!'
Perseus gave them their eye, and she who took it flew at him, but he laughed, and rose high above them and flew as he was told. Over many and many a league of sea and land he went, till he turned to his right from the Pillars of Heracles (at Gibraltar), and sailed along, west by south, through warm air, over the lonely endless Atlantic waters. At last he saw a great blue mountain, with snow feathering its crests, in a far-off island, and on that island he alighted. It was a country of beautiful flowers, and pine forests high on the hill, but below the pines all was like a garden, and in that garden was a tree bearing apples of gold, and round the tree were dancing three fair maidens, clothed in green, and white, and red.
'These must be the Nymphs of the Isle of the West,' said Perseus, and he floated down into the garden, and drew near them.
As soon as they saw him they left off dancing, and catching each other by the hands they ran to Perseus laughing, and crying, 'Hermes, our playfellow Hermes has come!' The arms of all of them went round Perseus at once, with much laughing and kissing. 'Why have you brought a great shield, Hermes?' they cried, 'here there is no unfriendly god or man to fight against you.'
Perseus saw that they had mistaken him for the god whose sword and winged shoon he wore, but he did not dislike the mistake of the merry maidens.
'I am not Hermes,' he said, 'but a mortal man, to whom the god has graciously lent his sword and shoon, and the shield was lent to me by Pallas Athênê. My name is Perseus.'
The girls leaped back from him, blushing and looking shy. The eldest girl answered, 'We are the daughters of Hesperus, the God of the Evening Star. I am Æglê, this is my sister Erytheia, and this is Hesperia. We are the keepers of this island, which is the garden of the gods, and they often visit us; our cousins, Dionysus, the young god of wine and mirth, and Hermes of the Golden Wand come often; and bright Apollo, and his sister Artemis the huntress. But a mortal man we have never seen, and wherefore have the gods sent you hither?'
'The two gods sent me, maidens, to ask you the way to the Isle of the Gorgons, that I may slay Medusa of the snaky hair, whom gods and men detest.'
'Alas!' answered the nymphs, 'how shall you slay her, even if we knew the way to that island, which we know not?'
Perseus sighed: he had gone so far, and endured so much, and had come to the Nymphs of the Isle of the West, and even they could not tell how to reach the Gorgons' island.