"you appear
to have spent a sleepless night. I hope you have been considering the
matter a little more wisely and have concluded not to get yourself
scorched to a cinder in attempting to tame my brazen-lunged bulls."

"That is already accomplished, may it please your majesty," replied
Jason. "The bulls have been tamed and yoked; the field has been
plowed; the dragon's teeth have been sown broadcast and harrowed into
the soil; the crop of armed warriors has sprung up and they have slain
one another to the last man. And now I solicit your majesty's
permission to encounter the dragon, that I may take down the Golden
Fleece from the tree and depart with my forty-nine comrades."

King AEetes scowled and looked very angry and excessively disturbed;
for he knew that, in accordance with his kingly promise, he ought now
to permit Jason to win the fleece if his courage and skill should
enable him to do so. But since the young man had met with such good
luck in the matter of the brazen bulls and dragon's teeth, the king
feared that he would be equally successful in slaying the dragon. And
therefore, though he would gladly have seen Jason snapped up at a
mouthful, he was resolved (and it was a very wrong thing of this
wicked potentate) not to run any further risk of losing his beloved
fleece.

"You never would have succeeded in this business, young man," said he,
"if my undutiful daughter Medea had not helped you with her
enchantments. Had you acted fairly, you would have been at this
instant a black cinder or a handful of white ashes. I forbid you, on
pain of death, to make any more attempts to get the Golden Fleece. To
speak my mind plainly, you shall never set eyes on so much as one of
its glistening locks."

Jason left the king's presence in great sorrow and anger. He could
think of nothing better to be done than to summon together his
forty-nine brave Argonauts, march at once to the grove of Mars, slay
the dragon, take possession of the Golden Fleece, get on board the
Argo and spread all sail for Iolchos. The success of this scheme
depended, it is true, on the doubtful point whether all the fifty
heroes might not be snapped up as so many mouthfuls by the dragon. But
as Jason was hastening down the palace steps, the Princess Medea
called after him and beckoned him to return. Her black eyes shone upon
him with such a keen intelligence that he felt as if there were a
serpent peeping out of them, and although she had done him