hat
they who stood before the lattice were men who reverenced the gods, who
would not strive to enter the forbidden garden. The maidens came toward
them. Beautiful as the singing of Orpheus was their utterance, but what
they said was a complaint and a lament.

Their lament was for the dragon Ladon, that dragon with a hundred heads
that guarded sleeplessly the tree that had the golden apples. Now that
dragon was slain. With arrows that had been dipped in the poison of the
Hydra's blood their dragon, Ladon, had been slain.

The Daughters of the Evening Land sang of how a mortal had come into
the garden that they watched over. He had a great bow, and with his
arrow he slew the dragon that guarded the golden apples. The golden
apples he had taken away; they had come back to the tree they had been
plucked from, for no mortal might keep them in his possession. So the
maidens sang Hespere, Eretheis, and Aegle--and they complained that
now, unhelped by the hundred-headed dragon, they had to keep guard over
the tree.

The Argonauts knew of whom they told the tale--Heracles, their comrade.
Would that Heracles were with them now!

The Hesperides told them of Heracles--of how the springs in the garden
dried up because of his plucking the golden apples. He came out of the
garden thirsting. Nowhere could he find a spring of water. To yonder
great rock he went. He smote it with his foot and water came out in
full floe.. Then he, leaning on his hands and with his chest upon the
ground, drank and drank from the water that flowed from the rifted rock.

The Argonauts looked to where the rock stood. They caught the sound of
water. They carried Medea over. And then, company after company, all
huddled together, they stooped down and drank their fill of the clear
good water. With lips wet with the water they cried to each other,
"Heracles! Although he is not with us, in very truth Heracles has saved
his comrades from deadly thirst!"

They saw his footsteps printed upon the rocks, and they followed them
until they led to the sand where no footsteps stay. Heracles! How glad
his comrades would have been if they could have had sight of him then!
But it was long ago before he had sailed with them--that Heracles had
been here.

Still hearing their complaint they turned back to the lattice, to where
the Daughters of the Evening Land stood. The Daughters of the Evening
Land bent their heads to listen to what the Argonauts told one another,
a