“I would take it and keep it.”
“A strong man has taken it and kept it long. Are you stronger than Pelias the terrible?”
“I can try my strength with his,” said Jason; but Chiron sighed, and said:
“You have many a danger to go through before you rule in Iolcos by the sea: many a danger and many a woe; and strange troubles in strange lands, such as man never saw before.”
“The happier I,” said Jason, “to see what man never saw before.”
And Chiron sighed again, and said, “The eaglet must leave the nest when it is fledged. Will you go to Iolcos by the sea? Then promise me two things before you go.” Jason promised, and Chiron answered, “Speak harshly to no soul whom you may meet, and stand by the word which you shall speak.”
Jason wondered why Chiron asked this of him; but he knew that the Centaur was a prophet, and saw things long before they came. So he promised, and leaped down the mountain, to take his fortune like a man. He went down through the arbutus thickets, and across the downs of thyme, till he came to the vineyard walls, and the pomegranates and the olives in the glen; and among the olives roared Anauros, all foaming with a summer flood.
And on the bank of Anauros sat a woman, all wrinkled, gray, and old, her head shook palsied on her breast, and her hands shook palsied on her knees; and when she saw Jason, she spoke whining, “Who will carry me across the flood?”
Jason was bold and hasty, and was just going to leap into the flood: and yet he thought twice before he leaped, so loud roared the torrent down, all brown from the mountain rains, and silver-veined with melting snow; while underneath he could hear the bowlders rumbling like the tramp of horsemen or the roll of wheels, as they ground along the narrow channel, and shook the rocks on which he stood.