The Boy With the U.S. Miners

by Francis Rolt-Wheeler

Many and strange were their adventures in the Argo, of which there is not space to tell. The tale is one of ever-increasing wonder: the battle with the Harpies, evil birds with human heads; the peril of the Sirens, whose deadly singing was drowned by Orpheus' song; the menace of the Symplegades, or moving rocks, which clashed together when a ship passed between; the fight with the Stymphalian birds, who used their feathers of brass as arrows; and many more. The story of the voyage of the Argo is a story that will never die.

Despite their wanderings and their adventures, the Quest of the Golden Fleece remained the goal of the Argonauts. After months—or it may have been years—Jason and the heroes reached the land they sought. There they presented themselves before Æetes and demanded the Golden Fleece.

The king of Colchis looked at these heroes and trembled. Well he knew that neither he nor his people were a match for such as they. He took refuge in stratagem, and, as Pelias had done, demanded from Jason the performance of feats he deemed impossible. He must yoke and tame the bulls of Hephæstus, god of fire, which snorted flame and had hoofs of red-hot brass; with these he must plow the field of Ares, god of battle; that done, he must sow the field with dragon's teeth, from which a host of armed men would spring, and he must defeat that army.

Truly, the task was one to tax a hero. But, as the gods would have it, Jason found a new but dangerous ally. This was Medea, the witch-daughter of Æetes, grand-daughter of Helios, god of the sun. She loved her father but little, for her father had imprisoned her for sorcery and, though she had escaped by means of her black arts, her dark heart brooded vengeance. Partly from love of Jason and partly from hatred of Æetes, she leagued herself with the heroes.

Jason was not proof against her wiles. Moreover, he realized that the task Æetes had set him was one almost beyond the doing. He accepted from the dark witch-maiden a magic draught which made him proof against fire and sword. Thus, scorning alike the fiery breath of the bulls and the myriad blades of the tiny swordsmen, he plowed the field of Ares and sowed it with the dragon's teeth. Then he threw a charm among the ranks of the dwarf warriors who sprang up from the soil, which caused them to fight, one against the other, until all were slain. Thus he reached the wood where hung the Golden Fleece.

There remained still to be conquered the dragon that never slept. Again the sorceress Medea came to the hero's help. By wild witch songs she charmed the monster to harmlessness, and, stepping across the snaky coils, Jason snatched from a bough the Golden Fleece, won at last!

Though the Argonauts feared Medea, and though Jason dreaded her fully as much as he was lured by her, the heroes could not deny that their quest had been successful mainly through her aid. For her reward, Medea demanded that they take her back to Greece in the Argo, and she took her young brother Absyrtus, with her. The oracle of oak in the bow prophesied disaster, but the heroes had pledged their words and could not retract.

The Argo had not gone far upon the sea before the heroes saw that Æetes was pursuing them. Here was a peril, truly, for Ares, god of battle, was on the pursuer's side. Then Medea seized her young brother, cut his body into pieces and scattered them on the sea. The anguished father stopped to collect the fragments and to return them to the shore for honorable burial. By this shameful device, the Argonauts escaped.

So hideous a crime demanded a dreadful expiation, but Jason was to draw the doom more directly upon his own head. Though he had shuddered at the murder of Absyrtus and he knew the witch-maid's hands were red with blood, the spell of Medea's dark beauty overswept his loathing. At the first land where the Argo stopped, he married her.

At this the gods were little pleased. They sent a great darkness and terrible storms which drove the Argonauts over an unknown sea to lands of new and fearful perils. Once they were all but swallowed in a quicksand, again, menaced by shipwreck, a third time, a giant whose body was of brass threatened them with a hideous death from which they were saved only by the twins, Castor and Pollux. The homeward journey of the Argo was not less wild and difficult than her coming.