Instantly the blinded giant saw once more. But seeing, he was constrained for the first time in his
life to bow his head before that fiery glance. When the god had whirled on upward, he picked up the trembling Cedalion, set him on his shoulders again, and turned back towards Lemnos, for his wrath still burned hotly against Œnopion. Yet amid his grim thoughts of vengeance, ever and again there sounded those faint music-breaths that had come to him when Eos passed by; and ever and again he would feel her soft lips against his brow.
Like some dripping sea monster, he stepped upon the beach of Chios. Overbearing all who would stay him, he drove on towards the palace. Œnopion, however, had been warned of his coming and had hastily hid himself in a labyrinthine cavern beneath the ground. Search as he might, Orion could not discover his enemy, and was reluctantly forced to forego the retribution he had planned.
He thought then to leave this ill-omened isle. But the next morning Eos, who had not forgotten him, carried him off to Delos. Since her Titan husband had been slain by the lightnings of Zeus, she claimed the right to marry this handsome hunter. But the council of the gods rejected her plea. She dared not resist this supreme decree, so sorrowfully she left him.
Now this tiny isle of Delos had been the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. Formerly called Ortygia, it had floated hither and thither before the winds; but when Leto came to give birth to these twin children of Zeus, and found no refuge elsewhere in all the world, the mighty ruler of Olympus fixed it firmly in its place by four chains of adamant; and forever after
it was sacred to the three divinities, though more particularly to Apollo.
Little reverence or awe was there in Orion's mind, however, when he found himself alone upon this rocky islet. He realized that for a third time invisible powers had come between him and the woman he thought his; worst of all, there was no one against whom he could direct the hot resentment that flexed every mighty muscle of his body.
His consuming wrath made some action a necessity. He started up the craggy slope of Mt. Cynthos, bursting through the tangled thicket, leaping from one boulder to another, striding across deep clefts in the rock,—with a vague idea that from the commanding summit of the hill he might spy one of these hidden enemies who thus thwarted him.
As he squeezed through a narrow pass at the foot of a riven face of rock, his hunter's eye caught the black spot marking a cave entrance; and the grizzly hairs at the opening told him it was a wolf's den. He paused instinctively and peered into the gloom of the cavern. A chorus of high yapping barks proclaimed the presence of a family of cubs.
He hesitated a moment, wondering if he could force his broad shoulders through the opening. Then he sprang to his feet and faced about, as he heard behind him a snarl that threatened instant danger.