so much
service only the night before, he was by no means very certain that
she would not do him an equally great mischief before sunset. These
enchantresses, you must know, are never to be depended upon.

"What says King AEetes, my royal and upright father?" inquired Medea,
slightly smiling. "Will he give you the Golden Fleece without any
further risk or trouble?"

"On the contrary," answered Jason, "he is very angry with me for
taming the brazen bulls and sowing the dragon's teeth. And he forbids
me to make any more attempts, and positively refuses to give up the
Golden Fleece, whether I slay the dragon or no."

"Yes, Jason," said the princess, "and I can tell you more. Unless you
set sail from Colchis before tomorrow's sunrise, the king means to
burn your fifty-oared galley and put yourself and your forty-nine
brave comrades to the sword. But be of good courage. The Golden Fleece
you shall have if it lies within the power of my enchantments to get
it for you. Wait for me here an hour before midnight."

At the appointed hour you might again have seen Prince Jason and the
Princess Medea, side by side, stealing through the streets of Colchis
on their way to the sacred grove, in the center of which the Golden
Fleece was suspended to a tree. While they were crossing the pasture
ground the brazen bulls came toward Jason, lowing, nodding their heads
and thrusting forth their snouts, which, as other cattle do, they
loved to have rubbed and caressed by a friendly hand. Their fierce
nature was thoroughly tamed; and with their fierceness, the two
furnaces in their stomachs had likewise been extinguished, insomuch
that they probably enjoyed far more comfort in grazing and chewing
their cuds than ever before. Indeed, it had heretofore been a great
inconvenience to these poor animals that, whenever they wished to eat
a mouthful of grass, the fire out of their nostrils had shriveled it
up before they could manage to crop it. How they contrived to keep
themselves alive is more than I can imagine. But now, instead of
emitting jets of flame and streams of sulphurous vapor, they breathed
the very sweetest of cow breath.

After kindly patting the bulls, Jason followed Medea's guidance into
the Grove of Mars, where the great oak trees that had been growing for
centuries threw so thick a shade that the moonbeams struggled vainly
to find their way through it. Only here and there a glimmer fell upon
the leaf-strewn earth, or now and