"I stop in your domain only as a guest," he explained to the giant, "I am of noble birth, having sprung from the gods, and I have just accomplished the brave deed of destroying the terror Medusa wrought on the sea. I ask only rest and food of you."
But Atlas could think of nothing but his greed for his gold apples.
"Be gone, boaster!" he cried, "or I will crush you like a worm beneath my heel. Neither your parentage or your valor shall avail you anything."
Perseus did not attempt to meet the force of the giant's greater strength, but he held up the head of the Gorgon full in his face. Then the massive bulk of Atlas was slowly but surely turned to stone. His iron muscles, his brawny limbs, his huge body and head increased in size and petrified until he towered above Perseus, a mighty mountain. His beard and hair became forests, his arm and shoulders cliffs, his head a summit, and his bones rocks. For all the rest of the centuries Atlas was to stand there holding the sky with its weight of stars on his shoulders.
Perseus continued his flight and he came to the country of the Ethiopians. The sea was as ruthless here as it had been when Medusa ruled the billows in her cave on the coast of Greece. As Perseus approached the coast he saw a terrible sight.
A sea monster was lashing the waves to fury and coming closer and closer to the shore. And a beautiful girl was chained to the rocks, waiting to be devoured by this dragon. She hung there, so pale and motionless that if it had not been for her tears that flowed in a long stream down the rocks, and her bright hair that the breezes from the sea blew about her like a cloud, Perseus would have thought her a marble statue carved and placed there on the rocks.
Perseus alighted beside her, startled at her horrible plight, and entranced with her beauty.
"Why are you fastened here in such danger?" he asked.
The girl did not speak at first, trying to cover her face, but her hands were also chained. At last she explained to Perseus.
"I am Andromeda, the princess of Ethiopia," she said, "and I must be a sacrifice to the sea because my mother, Queen Cassiopeia, has enraged the sea by comparing her beauty to that of the nymphs. I am offered here to appease the deities. Look, the monster comes!" she ended in a shriek.