ces made him swear never to challenge
strangers again as long as he lived, and then the crew of 'Argo' crowned
Polydeuces with a wreath of poplar leaves, and they took supper, and
Orpheus sang to them, and they slept, and next day they came to the
country of the unhappiest of kings.

His name was Phineus, and he was a prophet; but, when he came to meet
Jason and his company, he seemed more like the ghost of a beggar than a
crowned king. For he was blind, and very old, and he wandered like a
dream, leaning on a staff, and feeling the wall with his hand. His limbs
all trembled, he was but a thing of skin and bone, and foul and filthy
to see. At last he reached the doorway of the house where Jason was, and
sat down, with his purple cloak fallen round him, and he held up his
skinny hands, and welcomed Jason, for, being a prophet, he knew that now
he should be delivered from his wretchedness.

He lived, or rather lingered, in all this misery because he had offended
the gods, and had told men what things were to happen in the future
beyond what the gods desired that men should know. So they blinded him,
and they sent against him hideous monsters with wings and crooked claws,
called Harpies, which fell upon him at his meat, and carried it away
before he could put it to his mouth. Sometimes they flew off with all
the meat; sometimes they left a little, that he might not quite starve,
and die, and be at peace, but might live in misery. Yet what they left
was made so foul, and of such evil savour, that even a starving man
could scarcely take it within his lips. Thus this king was the most
miserable of all men living.

He welcomed the heroes, and, above all, Zetes and Calais, the sons of
the North Wind, for they, he knew, would help him. And they all went
into his wretched, naked hall, and sat down at the tables, and the
servants brought meat and drink and placed it before them, the latest
and last supper of the Harpies. Then down on the meat swooped the
Harpies, like lightning or wind, with clanging brazen wings, and iron
claws, and the smell of a battlefield where men lie dead; down they
swooped, and flew shrieking away with the food. But the two sons of the
North Wind drew their short swords, and rose in the air on their golden
wings, and followed where the Harpies fled, over many a sea and many a
land, till they came to a distant isle, and there they slew the Harpies
with their swords. And that isle was called 'Turn Again,'