uelty to place Danae and her boy, and he sent them out to sea in a
ship, the sailors having orders to let the chest down into the waters
when they were far from shore. They dared not disobey, but they put food
and a skin of wine, and two skins of water in the chest, and lowered it
into the sea, which was perfectly calm and still. It was their hope that
some ship would come sailing by, perhaps a ship of Phoenician
merchant-men, who would certainly save Danae and the child, if only that
they might sell them for slaves.

King Acrisius himself was not ignorant that this might happen, and that
his grandson might live to be the cause of his death. But the Greeks
believed that if any man killed one of his own kinsfolk, he would be
pursued and driven mad by the Furies called the Erinyes, terrible winged
women with cruel claws. These winged women drove Orestes, the son of
Agamemnon, fleeing like a madman through the world, because he slew his
own mother, Clytaemnestra, to avenge his father, whom she and Aegisthus
had slain. Nothing was so much dreaded as these Furies, and therefore
Acrisius did not dare to slay his daughter and his grandson, Perseus,
but only put them in the way of being drowned. He heard no more of them,
and hoped that both of their bodies were rolling in the waves, or that
their bones lay bleaching on some unknown shore. But he could not be
certain--indeed, he soon knew better--and as long as he lived, he lived
in fear that Perseus had escaped, and would come and slay him, as the
prophetess had said in her song.

The chest floated on the still waters, and the sea birds swooped down to
look at it, and passed by, with one waft of their wings. The sun set,
and Danae watched the stars, the Bear and Orion with his belt, and
wrapped her boy up warm, and he slept sound, for he never knew fear, in
his mother's arms. The Dawn came in her golden throne, and Danae saw
around her the blue sharp crests of the mountains of the islands that
lay scattered like water lilies on the seas of Greece. If only the
current would drift her to an island, she thought, and prayed in her
heart to the Gods of Good Help, Pallas Athene, and Hermes of the Golden
Wand. Soon she began to hope that the chest was drawing near an island.
She turned her head in the opposite direction for a long while, and then
looked forward again. She was much nearer the island, and could see the
smoke going up from cottages among the trees. But she drifted on and