on the whole ship's length and
overwhelm them all. But Nauplius was quick to ease the ship, and the
wave rolled away beneath the keel, and at the stern it raised the Argo
and dashed her away from the rocks.

They felt the sun as it streamed upon them through the sundered rocks.
They strained at the oars until the oars bent like bows in their hands.
The ship sprang forward. Surely they were now in the wide Sea of Pontus!

The Argonauts shouted. They saw the rocks behind them with the sea fowl
screaming upon them. Surely they were in the Sea of Pontus--the sea
that had never been entered before through the Rocks Wandering. The
rocks no longer dashed together; each remained fixed in its place, for
it was the will of the gods that these rocks should no more clash
together after a mortal's ship had passed between them.

They were now in the Sea of Pontus, the sea into which flowed the river
that Colchis was upon--the River Phasis. And now above Jason's head the
bird of peaceful days, the Halcyon, fluttered, and the Argonauts knew
that this was a sign from the gods that the voyage would not any more
be troublous.

XII. THE MOUNTAIN CAUCASUS

They rested in the harbor of Thynias, the desert island, and sailing
from there they came to the land of the Mariandyni, a people who were
constantly at war with the Bebrycians; there the hero Polydeuces was
welcomed as a god. Twelve days afterward they passed the mouth of the
River Callichorus; then they came to the mouth of that river that flows
through the land of the Amazons, the River Thermodon. Fourteen days
from that place brought them to the island that is filled with the
birds of Ares, the god of war. These birds dropped upon the heroes
heavy, pointed feathers that would have pierced them as arrows if they
had not covered themselves with their shields; then by shouting, and by
striking their shields with their spears, they raised such a clamor as
drove the birds away.

They sailed on, borne by a gentle breeze, until a gulf of the sea
opened before them, and lo! a mountain that they knew bore some mighty
name. Orpheus, looking on its peak and its crags, said, "Lo, now! We,
the Argonauts, are looking upon the mountain that is named Caucasus!"

When he declared the name the heroes all stood up and looked on the
mountain with awe. And in awe they cried out a name, and that name was
"Prometheus!"

For upon that mountain the Titan god was held, his limbs bound upon the
ha