ther apt to overlook things that lay directly under his
nose. If the sea only happened to be deep enough, however, Lynceus could
tell you exactly what kind of rocks or sands were at the bottom of it;
and he often cried out to his companions that they were sailing over
heaps of sunken treasure, which yet he was none the richer for
beholding. To confess the truth, few people believed him when he said
it.

Well! But when the Argonauts, as these fifty brave adventurers were
called, had prepared everything for the voyage, an unforeseen difficulty
threatened to end it before it was begun. The vessel, you must
understand, was so long and broad and ponderous that the united force of
all the fifty was insufficient to shove her into the water. Hercules, I
suppose, had not grown to his full strength, else he might have set her
afloat as easily as a little boy launches his boat upon a puddle. But
here were these fifty heroes, pushing and straining and growing red in
the face without making the Argo start an inch. At last, quite wearied
out, they sat themselves down on the shore, exceedingly disconsolate and
thinking that the vessel must be left to rot and fall in pieces and that
they must either swim across the sea or lose the Golden Fleece.

All at once Jason bethought himself of the galley's miraculous
figurehead.

"Oh, daughter of the Talking Oak," cried he, "how shall we set to work
to get our vessel into the water?"

"Seat yourselves," answered the image (for it had known what had ought
to be done from the very first and was only waiting for the question to
be put), "seat yourselves and handle your oars, and let Orpheus play
upon his harp."

Immediately the fifty heroes got on board, and seizing their oars, held
them perpendicularly in the air, while Orpheus (who liked such a task
far better than rowing) swept his fingers across the harp. At the first
ringing note of the music they felt the vessel stir. Orpheus thrummed
away briskly and the galley slid at once into the sea, dipping her prow
so deeply that the figurehead drank the wave with its marvelous lips,
and rising again as buoyant as a swan. The rowers plied their fifty
oars, the white foam boiled up before the prow, the water gurgled and
bubbled in their wake, while Orpheus continued to play so lively a
strain of music that the vessel seemed to dance over the billows by way
of keeping time to it. Thus triumphantly did the Argo sail out of the
harbor amid the huzza