er with thread, moulded them in with wax, and so
fashioned two great wings like those of a bird. When they were done,
Daedalus fitted them to his own shoulders, and after one or two efforts,
he found that by waving his arms he could winnow the air and cleave it,
as a swimmer does the sea. He held himself aloft, wavered this way and
that with the wind, and at last, like a great fledgling, he learned to
fly.

Without delay, he fell to work on a pair of wings for the boy Icarus,
and taught him carefully how to use them, bidding him beware of rash
adventures among the stars. "Remember," said the father, "never to fly
very low or very high, for the fogs about the earth would weigh you
down, but the blaze of the sun will surely melt your feathers apart if
you go too near."

For Icarus, these cautions went in at one ear and out by the other. Who
could remember to be careful when he was to fly for the first time? Are
birds careful? Not they! And not an idea remained in the boy's head but
the one joy of escape.

The day came, and the fair wind that was to set them free. The father
bird put on his wings, and, while the light urged them to be gone, he
waited to see that all was well with Icarus, for the two could not fly
hand in hand. Up they rose, the boy after his father. The hateful ground
of Crete sank beneath them; and the country folk, who caught a glimpse
of them when they were high above the tree-tops, took it for a vision of
the gods,--Apollo, perhaps, with Cupid after him.

At first there was a terror in the joy. The wide vacancy of the air
dazed them,--a glance downward made their brains reel. But when a great
wind filled their wings, and Icarus felt himself sustained, like a
halcyon-bird in the hollow of a wave, like a child uplifted by his
mother, he forgot everything in the world but joy. He forgot Crete and
the other islands that he had passed over: he saw but vaguely that
winged thing in the distance before him that was his father Daedalus. He
longed for one draught of flight to quench the thirst of his captivity:
he stretched out his arms to the sky and made towards the highest
heavens.

Alas for him! Warmer and warmer grew the air. Those arms, that had
seemed to uphold him, relaxed. His wings wavered, drooped. He fluttered
his young hands vainly,--he was falling,--and in that terror he
remembered. The heat of the sun had melted the wax from his wings; the
feathers were falling, one by one, like snowflakes;