carry so wise a block of wood along with him in his perilous
voyage.

"Tell me, wondrous image," exclaimed Jason, --"since you
inherit the wisdom of the Speaking Oak of Dodona, whose

daughter you are,--tell me, where shall I find fifty bold
youths, who will take each of them an oar of my galley? They

must have sturdy arms to row, and brave hearts to encounter
perils, or we shall never win the Golden Fleece."

"Go," replied the oaken image, "go, summon all the heroes of
Greece."

And, in fact, considering what a great deed was to be done,
could any advice be wiser than this which Jason received from

the figure-head of his vessel? He lost no time in sending
messengers to all the cities, and making known to the whole

people of Greece, that Prince Jason, the son of King Jason, was
going in quest of the Fleece of Gold, and that he desired the

help of forty-nine of the bravest and strongest young men
alive, to row his vessel and share his dangers. And Jason

himself would be the fiftieth.
At this news, the adventurous youths, all over the country,

began to bestir themselves. Some of them had already fought
with giants, and slain dragons; and the younger ones, who had

not yet met with such good fortune, thought it a shame to have
lived so long without getting astride of a flying serpent, or

sticking their spears into a Chimaera, or, at least, thrusting
their right arms down a monstrous lion's throat. There was a

fair prospect that they would meet with plenty of such
adventures before finding the Golden Fleece. As soon as they

could furbish up their helmets and shields, therefore, and gird
on their trusty swords, they came thronging to Iolchos, and

clambered on board the new galley. Shaking hands with Jason,
they assured him that they did not care a pin for their lives,

but would help row the vessel to the remotest edge of the
world, and as much farther as he might think it best to go.

Many of these brave fellows had been educated by Chiron, the
four-footed pedagogue, and were therefore old schoolmates of

Jason, and knew him to be a lad of spirit. The mighty Hercules,
whose shoulders afterwards upheld the sky, was one of them. And

there were Castor and Pollux, the twin brothers, who were never
accused of being chicken-hearted, although they had been

hatched out of an egg; and Theseus, who was so renowned for
killing the Minotaur, and Lynceus, with his wonderfully sharp

eyes, which could see through a millstone, or look right down
into the depths of the earth, and discover the treasures that

were there; and Orpheus, the very best of harpers, who sang and
played upon his lyre so sweetly, that the brute beasts stood

upon their hind legs, and capered merrily to the music. Yes,
and at some of his more moving tunes, the rocks bestirred their

moss-grown bulk out of the ground, and a grove of forest trees
uprooted themselves, and, nodding their tops to one another,

performed a country dance.
One of the rowers was a beautiful young woman, named Atalanta.

who had been nursed among the mountains by a bear. So light of
foot was this fair damsel, that she could step from one foamy

crest of a wave to the foamy crest of another, without wetting
more than the sole of her sandal. She had grown up in a very

wild way, and talked much about the rights of women, and loved
hunting and war far better than her needle. But in my opinion,

the most remarkable of this famous company were two sons of the
North Wind (airy youngsters, and of rather a blustering

disposition) who had wings on their shoulders, and, in case of
a calm, could puff out their cheeks, and blow almost as fresh a

breeze as their father. I ought not to forget the prophets and
conjurors, of whom there were several in the crew, and who

could foretell what would happen to-morrow or the next day, or
a hundred years hence, but were generally quite unconscious of

what was passing at the moment.
Jason appointed Tiphys to be helmsman because he was a

star-gazer, and knew the points of the compass. Lynceus, on
account of his sharp sight, was stationed as a look-out in the

prow, where he saw a whole day's sail ahead, but was rather apt
to overlook things that lay directly under his nose. If the sea

only happened to be deep enough, however, Lynceus could tell
you exactly what kind of rocks or sands were at the bottom of

it; and he often cried out to his companions, that they were
sailing over heaps of sunken treasure, which yet he was none

the richer for beholding. To confess the truth, few people
believed him when he said it.

Well! But when the Argonauts, as these fifty brave adventurers
were called, had prepared everything for the voyage, an

unforeseen difficulty threatened to end it before it was begun.
The vessel, you must understand, was so long, and broad, and

ponderous, that the united force of all the fifty was
insufficient to shove her into the water. Hercules, I suppose,

had not grown to his full strength, else he might have set her
afloat as easily as a little boy launches his boat upon a

puddle. But here were these fifty heroes, pushing, and
straining, and growing red in the face, without making the Argo

start an inch. At last, quite wearied out, they sat themselves
down on the shore exceedingly disconsolate, and thinking that

the vessel must be left to rot and fall in pieces, and that
they must either swim across the sea or lose the Golden Fleece.

All at once, Jason bethought himself of the galley's miraculous
figure-head.

"O, daughter of the Talking Oak," cried he, "how shall we set
to work to get our vessel into the water?"

"Seat yourselves," answered the image (for it had known what
had ought to be done from the very first, and was only waiting

for the question to be put),--" seat yourselves, and handle
your oars, and let Orpheus play upon his harp."

Immediately the fifty heroes got on board, and seizing their
oars, held them perpendicularly in the air, while Orpheus (who

liked such a task far better than rowing) swept his fingers
across the harp. At the first ringing note of the music, they

felt the vessel stir. Orpheus thrummed away briskly, and the
galley slid at once into the sea, dipping her prow so deeply

that the figure-head drank the wave with its marvelous lips,
and rising again as buoyant as a swan. The rowers plied their

fifty oars; the white foam boiled up before the prow; the water
gurgled and bubbled in their wake; while Orpheus continued to

play so lively a strain of music, that the vessel seemed to
dance over the billows by way of keeping time to it. Thus

triumphantly did the Argo sail out of the harbor, amidst the
huzzas and good wishes of everybody except the wicked old

Pelias, who stood on a promontory, scowling at her, and wishing
that he could blow out of his lungs the tempest of wrath that

was in his heart, and so sink the galley with all on board.
When they had sailed above fifty miles over the sea, Lynceus

happened to cast his sharp eyes behind, and said that there was
this bad-hearted king, still perched upon the promontory, and

scowling so gloomily that it looked like a black thunder-cloud
in that quarter of the horizon.

In order to make the time pass away more pleasantly during the
voyage, the heroes talked about the Golden Fleece. It

originally belonged, it appears, to a Boeotian ram, who had
taken on his back two children, when in danger of their lives,

and fled with them over land and sea as far as Colchis. One of