mour from her father's
head, and bathed her by Trito's waters. It was noon-tide and the
fiercest rays of the sun were scorching Libya; they stood near Aeson's
son, and lightly drew the cloak from his head. And the hero cast down
his eyes and looked aside, in reverence for the goddesses, and as he lay
bewildered all alone they addressed him openly with gentle words:

"Ill-starred one, why art thou so smitten with despair? We know how ye
went in quest of the golden fleece; we know each toil of yours, all the
mighty deeds ye wrought in your wanderings over land and sea. We are the
solitary ones, goddesses of the land, speaking with human voice, the
heroines, Libya's warders and daughters. Up then; be not thus afflicted
in thy misery, and rouse thy comrades. And when Amphitrite has
straightway loosed Poseidon's swift-wheeled car, then do ye pay to your
mother a recompense for all her travail when she bare you so long in her
womb; and so ye may return to the divine land of Achaea."

Thus they spake, and with the voice vanished at once, where they stood.
But Jason sat upon the earth as he gazed around, and thus cried:

"Be gracious, noble goddesses of the desert, yet the saying about our
return I understand not clearly. Surely I will gather together my
comrades and tell them, if haply we can find some token of our escape,
for the counsel of many is better."

He spake, and leapt to his feet, and shouted afar to his comrades, all
squalid with dust, like a lion when he roars through the woodland
seeking his mate; and far off in the mountains the glens tremble at the
thunder of his voice; and the oxen of the field and the herdsmen shudder
with fear; yet to them Jason's voice was no whit terrible--the voice of
a comrade calling to his friends. And with looks downcast they gathered
near, and hard by where the ship lay he made them sit down in their
grief and the women with them, and addressed them and told them
everything:

"Listen, friends; as I lay in my grief, three goddesses girded with
goat-skins from the neck downwards round the back and waist, like
maidens, stood over my head nigh at hand; and they uncovered me, drawing
my cloak away with light hand, and they bade me rise up myself and go
and rouse you, and pay to our mother a bounteous recompense for all her
travail when she bare us so long in her womb, when Amphitrite shall have
loosed Poseidon's swift-wheeled car. But I cannot fully understand
concerning this divine