ld heart will teach you that there is but one way
of dealing with a mad bull. What it is I leave you to find out in the
moment of peril. As for the fiery breath of these animals, I have a
charmed ointment here which will prevent you from being burned up and
cure you if you chance to be a little scorched."

So she put a golden box into his hand and directed him how to apply
the perfumed unguent which it contained, and where to meet her at
midnight.

"Only be brave," added she, "and before daybreak the brazen bulls
shall be tamed."

The young man assured her that his heart would not fail him. He then
rejoined his comrades, and told them what had passed between the
princess and himself, and warned them to be in readiness in case there
might be need of their help.

At the appointed hour he met the beautiful Medea on the marble steps
of the king's palace. She gave him a basket, in which were the
dragon's teeth, just as they had been pulled out of the monster's jaws
by Cadmus long ago. Medea then led Jason down the palace steps and
through the silent streets of the city and into the royal
pasture-ground, where the two brazen-footed bulls were kept. It was a
starry night, with a bright gleam along the eastern edge of the sky,
where the moon was soon going to show herself. After entering the
pasture the princess paused and looked around.

"There they are," said she, "reposing themselves and chewing their
fiery cuds in that furthest corner of the field. It will be excellent
sport, I assure you, when they catch a glimpse of your figure. My
father and all his court delight in nothing so much as to see a
stranger trying to yoke them in order to come at the Golden Fleece. It
makes a holiday in Colchis whenever such a thing happens. For my part,
I enjoy it immensely. You cannot imagine in what a mere twinkling of
an eye their hot breath shrivels a young man into a black cinder."

"Are you sure, beautiful Medea," asked Jason, "quite sure, that the
unguent in the gold box will prove a remedy against those terrible
burns?"

"If you doubt, if you are in the least afraid," said the princess,
looking him in the face by the dim starlight, "you had better never
have been born than go a step nigher to the bulls."

But Jason had set his heart steadfastly on getting the Golden Fleece,
and I positively doubt whether he would have gone back without it even
had he been certain of finding himself turned into a red-hot cinder,
or a handfu