the dragon's teeth. So Jason scattered them broadcast, and
harrowed them into the soil with a brush-harrow, and took his stand on
the edge of the field, anxious to see what would happen next.

"Must we wait long for harvest time?" he inquired of Medea, who was now
standing by his side.

"Whether sooner or later, it will be sure to come," answered the
princess. "A crop of armed men never fails to spring up, when the
dragon's teeth have been sown."

The moon was now high aloft in the heavens, and threw its bright beams
over the plowed field, where as yet there was nothing to be seen. Any
farmer, on viewing it, would have said that Jason must wait weeks before
the green blades would peep from among the clods, and whole months
before the yellow grain would be ripened for the sickle. But by and by,
all over the field, there was something that glistened in the moonbeams,
like sparkling drops of dew. These bright objects sprouted higher, and
proved to be the steel heads of spears. Then there was a dazzling gleam
from a vast number of polished brass helmets, beneath which, as they
grew farther out of the soil, appeared the dark and bearded visages of
warriors, struggling to free themselves from the imprisoning earth. The
first look that they gave at the upper world was a glare of wrath and
defiance. Next were seen their bright breastplates; in every right hand
there was a sword or a spear, and on each left arm a shield; and when
this strange crop of warriors had but half grown out of the earth, they
struggled--such was their impatience of restraint--and, as it were, tore
themselves up by the roots. Wherever a dragon's tooth had fallen, there
stood a man armed for battle. They made a clangor with their swords
against their shields, and eyed one another fiercely; for they had come
into this beautiful world, and into the peaceful moonlight, full of rage
and stormy passions, and ready to take the life of every human brother,
in recompense of the boon of their own existence.

There have been many other armies in the world that seemed to possess
the same fierce nature with the one which had now sprouted from
the dragon's teeth; but these, in the moonlit field, were the more
excusable, because they never had women for their mothers. And how it
would have rejoiced any great captain, who was bent on conquering the
world, like Alexander or Napoleon, to raise a crop of armed soldiers as
easily as Jason did! For a while, the warriors s