lled the Ister) lay beneath him like a long
thread of silver. The air grew cold as he crossed lands then unknown to
the Greeks, lands where wild men dwelt, clad in the skins of beasts, and
using axe-heads and spear-heads made of sharpened stones. He passed to
the land at the back of the North Wind, a sunny warm land, where the
people sacrifice wild asses to the God Apollo. Beyond this he came to a
burning desert of sand, but far away he saw trees that love the water,
poplars and willows, and thither he flew.

He came to a lake among the trees, and round and round the lake were
flying three huge grey swans, with the heads of women, and their long
grey hair flowed down below their bodies, and floated on the wind. They
sang to each other as they flew, in a voice like the cry of the swan.
They had but one eye among them, and but one tooth, which they passed to
each other in turn, for they had arms and hands under their wings.
Perseus dropped down in his flight, and watched them. When one was
passing the eye to the other, none of them could see him, so he waited
for his chance and took it, and seized the eye.

'Where is our eye? Have _you_ got it?' said the Grey Woman from whose
hand Perseus took it. 'I have it not.'

'I have it not!' cried each of the others, and they all wailed like
swans.

'I have it,' said Perseus, and hearing his voice they all flew to the
sound of it but he easily kept out of their way. 'The eye will I keep,'
said Perseus, 'till you tell me what none knows but you, the way to the
Isle of the Gorgons.'

'We know it not,' cried the poor Grey Women. 'None knows it but the
Nymphs of the Isle of the West: give us our eye!'

'Then tell me the way to the Nymphs of the Isle of the West,' said
Perseus.

'Turn your back, and hold your course past the isle of Albion, with the
white cliffs, and so keep with the land on your left hand, and the
unsailed sea on your right hand, till you mark the pillars of Heracles
on your left, then take your course west by south, and a curse on you!
Give us our eye!'

Perseus gave them their eye, and she who took it flew at him, but he
laughed, and rose high above them and flew as he was told. Over many and
many a league of sea and land he went, till he turned to his right from
the Pillars of Heracles (at Gibraltar), and sailed along, west by south,
through warm air, over the lonely endless Atlantic waters. At last he
saw a great blue mountain, with snow feathering its cr