and all that money can give,
to face hunger and thirst, and wounds and death, that they might fight
for their country and their Queen? No, children, there is a better thing
on earth than wealth, a better thing than life itself; and that is, to
have done something before you die, for which good men may honour you,
and God your Father smile upon your work.

Therefore we will believe--why should we not--of these same Argonauts of
old, that they, too, were noble men, who planned and did a noble deed;
and that therefore their fame has lived, and been told in story and in
song, mixed up, no doubt, with dreams and fables, yet true and right at
heart. So we will honour these old Argonauts, and listen to their story
as it stands; and we will try to be like them, each of us in our place;
for each of us has a Golden Fleece to seek, and a wild sea to sail over,
ere we reach it, and dragons to fight ere it be ours.

And what was that first Golden Fleece? I do not know, nor care. The old
Hellenes said that it hung in Colchis, which we call the Circassian
coast, nailed to a beech tree in the war-god's wood; and that it was the
fleece of the wondrous ram, who bore Phrixus and Helle across the Euxine
Sea. For Phrixus and Helle were the children of the cloud nymph, and of
Athamas the Minuan king. And when a famine came upon the land, their
cruel stepmother, Ino, wished to kill them, that her own children might
reign, and said that they must be sacrificed on an altar, to turn away
the anger of the gods. So the poor children were brought to the altar,
and the priest stood ready with his knife, when out of the clouds came
the Golden Ram, and took them on his back, and vanished. Then madness
came upon that foolish king Athamas, and ruin upon Ino and her children.
For Athamas killed one of them in his fury, and Ino fled from him with
the other in her arms, and leaped from a cliff into the sea, and was
changed into a dolphin, such as you have seen, which wanders over the
waves forever sighing, with its little one clasped to its breast.

But the people drove out King Athamas, because he had killed his child;
and he roamed about in his misery, till he came to the Oracle in Delphi.
And the Oracle told him that he must wander for his sin, till the wild
beasts should feast him as their guest. So he went on in hunger and
sorrow for many a weary day, till he saw a pack of wolves. The wolves
were tearing a sheep; but when they saw Athamas they fled,