her
dark heart brooded vengeance. Partly from love of Jason and partly
from hatred of Aeetes, she leagued herself with the heroes.

Jason was not proof against her wiles. Moreover, he realized that the
task Aeetes had set him was one almost beyond the doing. He accepted
from the dark witch-maiden a magic draught which made him proof
against fire and sword. Thus, scorning alike the fiery breath of the
bulls and the myriad blades of the tiny swordsmen, he plowed the field
of Ares and sowed it with the dragon's teeth. Then he threw a charm
among the ranks of the dwarf warriors who sprang up from the soil,
which caused them to fight, one against the other, until all were
slain. Thus he reached the wood where hung the Golden Fleece.

There remained still to be conquered the dragon that never slept.
Again the sorceress Medea came to the hero's help. By wild witch songs
she charmed the monster to harmlessness, and, stepping across the
snaky coils, Jason snatched from a bough the Golden Fleece, won at
last!

Though the Argonauts feared Medea, and though Jason dreaded her fully
as much as he was lured by her, the heroes could not deny that their
quest had been successful mainly through her aid. For her reward,
Medea demanded that they take her back to Greece in the _Argo_, and
she took her young brother Absyrtus, with her. The oracle of oak in
the bow prophesied disaster, but the heroes had pledged their words
and could not retract.

The _Argo_ had not gone far upon the sea before the heroes saw that
Aeetes was pursuing them. Here was a peril, truly, for Ares, god of
battle, was on the pursuer's side. Then Medea seized her young
brother, cut his body into pieces and scattered them on the sea. The
anguished father stopped to collect the fragments and to return them
to the shore for honorable burial. By this shameful device, the
Argonauts escaped.

So hideous a crime demanded a dreadful expiation, but Jason was to
draw the doom more directly upon his own head. Though he had shuddered
at the murder of Absyrtus and he knew the witch-maid's hands were red
with blood, the spell of Medea's dark beauty overswept his loathing.
At the first land where the _Argo_ stopped, he married her.

At this the gods were little pleased. They sent a great darkness and
terrible storms which drove the Argonauts over an unknown sea to lands
of new and fearful perils. Once they were all but swallowed in a
quicksand, again, menaced by shipwreck, a