VIII. The Carrying of the Argo
WITH 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 [pg 153] 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 over-wearied 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.