Favorite Greek Myths (Yesterday's Classics) by Lilian Stoughton Hyde Read Free Book Online Page B

other great fish that lived in those waters, and her heart was full of terror.
    The chest drifted all night on a quiet sea. In the early morning, the tides brought it close to the island of Seriphus, where it became entangled in a fisherman's nets. Dictys, the fisherman to whom the nets belonged, when starting out for his day's fishing, saw the chest and drew it in. He took Danaë and her baby to his brother Polydectes, who was the king of that island. King Polydectes was willing that Danaë should stay on the island, and Danaë was very thankful for this kindness. She found a good home there; for Dictys and his wife took her into their own cottage, and did all they could to make her comfortable.
    When the golden child, which Danaë named Perseus, grew up, he became a strong, handsome youth who attracted much attention from the people everywhere. King Polydectes began to wish that the brass-bound chest had never floated to the island of Seriphus. In fact, he took a great dislike to Perseus, a dislike which became an active hatred. The stronger and handsomer Perseus grew, and the more admiration his youthful strength and beauty called forth, the more King Polydectes hated him. He finally began to think over plans for getting rid of him forever.

PERSEUS

    On a rocky, dreary, barren island which lay in the midst of the sea, a long way from the island of Seriphus and from every inhabited country, there lived three fierce sisters who were called the Gorgons. These strange sisters had faces like women, but do not seem to have been like women in any other respect. They had eagles' wings with glittering golden feathers, scales of brass and iron, claws of brass, and great fierce-looking tusks which must have made a strange appearance with their human faces. Worst of all, instead of hair, their heads were covered with venomous snakes, that were always twisting themselves about, and putting out their forked tongues, ready to bite anything that came within reach. The two oldest Gorgons had always been just such fierce creatures as they were now; but the youngest, who was called the Medusa, had once been a beautiful woman who was very proud of her long black curls. In spite of her beautiful face, this woman's heart was like the hearts of the Gorgons, and to punish her for a wicked deed she had done, the gods changed her curls into writhing vipers, and made her face so terrible that any one who looked at it was immediately changed into stone. In all other respects she became a sister to the Gorgons, and had to go and live with them. She was the most frightful one of all, because of her power of changing men into stone.
    Now King Polydectes knew all about the Gorgons, and he made up his mind that there could be no better way of getting rid of Perseus than to send him after the Medusa's head. So one day he called the young man to him, and told him that he expected to be married soon to the Princess Hippodamia, and asked him to bring to the wedding feast, as his gift, the head of Medusa. He added, that unless Perseus brought the head with him, he must never come back to the island of Seriphus again; and then, to make matters worse, he shut Danaë up in an underground dungeon, and said she should not come out till Perseus brought him the head.
    Perseus did not even know where the Island of the Gorgons was, nor how to find it. He thought it must be somewhere in the western sea, and as he stood on the shore, looking off at the place in the west where the sky came down to meet the water, he suddenly noticed that two people were standing on the sands by his side. One was a very tall woman who wore a helmet on her head and carried a very bright shield on her arm and a lance in her hand. The other was a young man with wings on his cap and on his sandals, a winged staff in his hand, and a crooked sword that shone like a flame, at his side. Perseus knew that the tall woman was Minerva and the young man Mercury, and that they had come to help him. This