Dædalus bowed, and obtained leave to set up a forge, where he and Icarus were soon heard working all night and all day. If the listeners could have looked in, they would have been surprised. He was making nothing more wonderful than pieces of iron, sharp at one end and thick at the other. When he had made enough, he summoned the king and his Court to see him split the biggest and hardest rock they could find on the sea-shore.
They fixed upon a granite cliff. Dædalus put the sharp end of one of his pieces of iron into one of the smallest cracks in the face of the cliff, and hammered upon the blunt end till he had driven it home. Then between this and the stone he drove in another piece of iron; and between these two a third; and so on, and so on, while the rock began to gape, and then to split, until the upper portion parted itself from the lower, and thundered down into the sea.
The secret was simple enough. Dædalus had simply invented the wedge, which can do much greater things than that when it is skillfully used. But the Cretans were amazed to see, as they thought, one man knocking over a cliff with a common hammer.
Then Dædalus set up a workshop by the shore, with some long sheds, and a supply of hemp and timber. Here also he worked day and night; and at last called Minos and his Court to see a ship go without oars.
The ship had a tall pole rising from the middle of the deck. Dædalus and Icarus went on board, and were seen pulling at some long ropes; and presently the ship seemed to spread out wings like a bird, and to skim over the water as fast as the wind without the help of an oar.
Dædalus had invented sails. But the Cretans were more amazed than before, never having thought of such a simple thing for themselves.
Dædalus then went back to his forge; and what he did there nobody could guess, for scarce a sound was heard. After many days, however, he went to the king’s palace, he and Icarus carrying a long and heavy chest between them. The chest being opened before Minos, Dædalus took out from it a number of images, exquisitely wrought in wood, bronze, ivory, silver, and gold—men and women; fauns, nymphs, animals; creatures of all sorts and kinds.
When Minos had looked at them and admired them, Dædalus touched them one after another; and then, with a whirring noise, the images seemed to live. The nymphs and satyrs joined hands, and danced in a ring round a bronze Pan who piped to them; a number of wooden young men boxed and wrestled: in short—
In short, Dædalus had invented clock-work. But the Cretans were more amazed than ever, and stood staring, half delighted, half frightened, till he put up the figures in their box again.
“You are the man for me!” exclaimed Minos. “I said I would take you into my own service; and I will. You shall make a cage for the Minotaur!”