But crusty old Hercules had remained in the ship. As my readers will remember, when young he had chosen Duty instead of Pleasure. So after these jollifications had been going on for some time he came ashore and told his companions what he thought of them. It may be that by then the Argonauts were beginning to find life on an island entirely populated by women a bit exhausting. Anyhow, they admitted that they ought to be ashamed of themselves, and agreed to continue their voyage.
Having sailed up the Hellespont they entered the Propontis Sea, which we now call the Sea of Marmara. There they put in to a haven on its south coast and were kindly received by Cyzicus, the King of the Doliones. This young man was just about to get married and invited them to his wedding feast. Hercules, not being keen on that sort of thing, went off on his own, and it was as well he did. He found that while all the inhabitants of the place were celebrating, a race of giants had come down from the hills and were blocking up the mouth of the harbour with huge stones.
He gave the alarm and kept the giants off with his poisoned arrows until the other Argonauts came on the scene and managed to get their vessel to sea. But later that night a storm drove them back on to the coast. The Doliones, thinking they were enemy raiders, set upon them. In the fight that followed several of the Doliones were killed, among them young King Cyzicus. When daylight came, the mistake was discovered. Everyone was upset, but the Argonauts could only express their regrets and stay over to attend the funeral rites.
Farther along the same coast the Mysians welcomed and gave a party for them. But once again Hercules behaved like a boor and wouldn’t join in the fun. However, this time he had something special to occupy him. He had recently broken his oar and he went off into the forest to look for a pine tree large enough to make an oar suitable to his immense strength.
I have never done any rowing myself, but I should have thought that having one oar much bigger than all the rest would have made things pretty tricky. Still, that’s beside the point. With him he took Polyphemus, a pal of his, and a beautiful youth named Hylas, of whom he was very fond.
Having found a pine tree that he liked the look of, Hercules sent young Hylas to fetch some water for their frugal supper, then took off his coat to cut the tree down. Hylas found a lake and was kneeling down on its bank to fill whatever it was he had brought with him when a lot of pretty heads bobbed up nearby. These belonged to Water Nymphs who owned the place. After one look at Hylas these girls decided that they could have a lot of fun with such a good-looking chap if only they could keep him with them. So they pulled him in and he never came up again.
Polyphemus heard his shout and ran to get Hercules. Thinking their young friend had been carried off by robbers, they searched the woods all night and went on searching them for some days afterwards. Meanwhile the other Argonauts were getting a bit restive, because the wind was fair. At length, believing H. and Co. must all be dead, they sailed without them. However, before they had gone far a sea god called Glaucus surfaced near the vessel and said for them not to worry. Hercules was O.K. and before long he would have plenty of other things on his plate, so he wouldn’t really mind very much not having been in on getting the Golden Fleece.
Their next call was on the King of the Bebrycians. He was not a nice person, as he was very strong and his fun was to insist that any stranger should box with him, then knock them out. In Pollux, who took him on, he caught a Tartar, for he got knocked out himself.
King Phineus, whose country they came to soon after, they found in very poor shape. He was blind and three horrid creatures called Harpies never ceased from tormenting him. They were enormous vultures with women’s faces and every time the blind King tried to eat anything they either snatched it from him or made a nasty mess on it. Why he had not long since starved to death is a mystery, and I don’t see either how he managed to govern his kingdom.
Fortunately several of the Argonauts were the sons of gods by good-looking girls, and two of them had been born with wings. So they flapped up into the air and sent the Harpies packing. Anxious to repay the people who had at last enabled him to eat a decent dinner, Phineus warned them that they were heading for two floating islands of icy rock called the Symplegades. These islands had a nasty habit of parting, then when a ship was sailing between them suddenly closing and crushing it to bits. Phineus tipped Jason off to take a dove aboard and let it fly between the islands first.
Jason took this advice and when they came to the icebergs, as that is what they must have been, he sent the dove through the channel. The two ‘bergs came together with a clang and, believe it or not, nipped off the dove’s tail feathers. But the shock made them bounce apart, and by rowing all out the Argonauts managed to get through just in time. Personally, instead of risking going between them I should have rowed round one of them, but none of our Heroes seems to have thought of that.
By this time they were well up in the cold Black Sea and there they had many other adventures, including being attacked by a flock of enormous birds called the Stymphalides. Their feathers were made of brass and they could shoot them off like javelins, so to be pulling at an oar beneath them can have been no fun at all. But half the Argonauts kept rowing while the other half banged their spears on their bronze shields, and the noise scared the birds off.
They were now drawing near to Colchis, but before going in for their attempt to make off with the Fleece, they anchored under the lee of an island some way off the coast. Here they had a stroke of luck, for they came upon four naked youths who had been shipwrecked there. These turned out to be the sons of Phrixus, so they were able to tell the Argonauts all about the court of King Aeetes and guide them to it.
Naturally these young men’s mother, Chalciope, was delighted to see them again, and her much younger sister, Medea, instantly took a very good view of Jason. But King Aeetes felt a bit uneasy at his house being filled with all these forceful-looking Argonauts, and after supper, when Jason told him what they had come for, he looked very glum indeed.
Jason related all the perils they had been through and claimed the Fleece as their reward. I am no lawyer, but it doesn’t seem to me that even shooting Niagara Falls, climbing Mount Everest, going to the bottom of the sea in a bathysphere then being first man up in the stratosphere would entitle one to ask for the Crown Jewels. King Aeetes saw it as I do, but he made Jason a sporting offer.
He said: ‘I’ve got a couple of brazen bulls that belch fire from their nostrils. You can have a shot at harnessing them and using them to plough a four-acre field. I’ll then provide you with a satchel full of dragons’ teeth to sow the field with. From each tooth there will spring up a fully armed warrior and you will have to take them on single-handed. If you can get through that programme between dawn and dusk I’ll let you have a crack at my sleepless serpent that guards the Golden Fleece.’
Being a Hero, Jason said: ‘Done!’ and went back to his ship to get some shut-eye. But the two Princesses had got butterflies in the tummy about him. Chalciope was afraid that if Jason fell down on the job her papa would have all the rest of the Argonauts killed, and with them her sons for having brought them there. So she slipped on a dressing-gown and went along to Medea’s room to ask her help.
Her reason for hoping that her younger sister might be able to put a fast one over their papa was because Medea was a very clever witch. As Medea already had ants in her pants about Jason, she needed no urging to play. Getting into whatever were the equivalent in those days of gumboots and a warmly lined macintosh, she sneaked out of the palace and went into the woods. There she gathered all sorts of herbs and, having brought them back to the kitchen, stewed them down, while muttering enchantments various, until their juices had become a paste. Putting a veil round her head, she then took the magic ointment she had made down to the Argo, which was moored in the river, and had Jason roused from his sleep. She told him that if he wished to come through next day’s ordeal alive he must smear this stuff all over his body and his weapons, then nothing could
harm him or break them.
Having guessed who she was and already having the same sort of yen for her that she had for him, he thought he could trust her. But when morning came, being a leery sort of cove, he smeared on the ointment then asked some of his pals to try their weapons on him.
This test having proved satisfactory, he went off quite cheerfully to face anything that was coming his way. When he reached the field he threw his spear, sword and helmet aside and stripped to the buff. But of course in those days the girls who were looking on were quite used to chaps doing that. When the brazen bulls were released from their underground stable, they came roaring up like a couple of camouflaged tanks equipped with flame throwers. But Jason just stood there letting them charge him and dash their horns against his unbreakable shield. Presumably he played them like a Spanish matador until he had taken some of the stuffing out of them. Then he chucked away his shield and put on a rodeo act, seizing the bulls by the horns and throwing them on their backs. How he managed to tackle both of them at once passes my comprehension, but he got them yoked up and goaded them into ploughing the four-acre field.
By then King Aeetes was beginning to look a bit green in the gills, but he gave Jason the bag of dragons’ teeth and continued to hope that our Hero would bite the dust. No sooner had Jason sown the teeth than row upon row of fierce warriors sprang up from the furrows. It was now up to Jason to kill every one of them before the sun set, but in the middle of the night Medea had whispered to him a trick for getting rid of them that would save his breath.
Doing as she had told him, he picked up a great stone boulder and heaved it right into the middle of the host that was about to set upon him. It may be that these warriors had come to life too quickly to be more than half-baked. Anyhow, none of them seemed to have seen him hurl this great stone; they only realised that it had come down in the midst of them. Those nearest where it had landed accused one of the others of having thrown it. Soon a fight started among them and they were all at one another’s throats. Jason just stood looking on while the furrows were filled with blood and the field became black with corpses. By the time the sun went down there was not a single one left and the ground had swallowed them all up again. It was just as simple as that.
Jason then said to the King: ‘Now, old cock. How about handing over the Fleece?’
But Aeetes, having been told years before by the Oracle that if he ever parted with it his number would be up, was not prepared to commit what would have amounted to hara-kiri just to please Jason. So he stalled for time and said: ‘We’ll have a chat about that in the morning.’
Actually he had already decided that the best thing he could do was to collect several hundred of his warriors together during the night and have them wipe the Argonauts off the slate next day. That his plan failed was partly due to Medea’s having gone so weak in the knees over Jason, and partly owing to Aeetes’s meanness. Having tumbled to what was afoot, Medea hurried off to warn the boy friend; but he and his pals wouldn’t have had much chance to act on her warning if Aeetes had had the foresight to put them up in his palace. Had he done that he would have had a good chance of having them all murdered in their beds, or anyhow of preventing them from getting back to their ship. As it was the old skinflint left them to rough it on their own in a camp down by the river.
When Medea arrived they were still at supper. She told Jason that her papa meant to double-cross him and that his only chance of not being turned into cat’s meat was to pinch the Fleece there and then and sail off with it before dawn. While the Argonauts jumped to it to get their vessel ready for sea, Jason set off with Medea and her young brother Absyrtus, who had tagged along with her, to the sacred grove.
Young Absyrtus trembled like a jelly when he heard the hissing of the huge poison-breathing snake that guarded the Fleece. But tackling it was just Children’s Hour stuff to Medea. She bedevilled it by singing a low witches’ chant, then sprinkled some magic powder she had brought with her on its eyes. That sent it to sleep, so all Jason had to do was to step over its body and tear the Fleece down from the tree to which it had been nailed.
When they got back to the ship, Medea said: ‘If my pop tumbles to it that it was I who put you up to this, I shall be for the high jump. So how about taking me with you?’
Chivalry apart, by then her hip-wriggling act had got Jason where she wanted him, so he replied: ‘Gladly, oh Maiden, and wilt thou honour me by becoming my bride?’ or words to that effect.
So they went aboard, taking young Absyrtus with them, and by first light the Argo was standing out to sea with the Golden Fleece nailed to the mast and all sail set.
I would not like to sully my gentle readers’ ears with the sort of language King Aeetes must have used when he heard what had happened, but he was not the chap to take that sort of thing lying down. In no time at all he had manned his fleet and put to sea in pursuit, and some of his ships were so fast that it seemed certain that they would catch up with the Argo.
When the leading vessel got so close that Medea could see the face of her papa as he stood glowering in the prow, she decided on taking drastic action. She made the Argonauts kill her young brother, cut him in pieces and throw the bits overboard. As Aeetes felt bound to give his son proper burial he had to heave to in order to fish the bits out of the water, and while he was kept busy doing that the Argo managed to get away.
Although Medea had saved their bacon, Jason must have been a bit worried on discovering the sort of better-half he had taken to his bosom. The gods, too, thought that her killing her young brother in this way was a most unsporting thing to do, and they made the Argonauts pay for it in no uncertain manner.
Instead of letting the Argo have a nice trip back to Greece they gave her a very unpleasant passage. Time after time she was carried off her course by tempests and driven on to unknown shores. For months on end her wretched crew humped her over land and across mountains until they reached the Med. But there were more storms after they had re-launched her, and she was washed up in North Africa. There, for some reason, they had to carry her again over miles of desert under a blistering sun. This went on for years and years, so when at last they did manage to get home those among them who had set out as hardy youths had become middle-aged men. If I’d been one of them I must say I’d have been pretty fed up with Jason for having caused me to waste the best years of my life. Still, they had got the Fleece.
Old Pelias was still alive, and was pretty shattered at seeing them again after all this time, as he had long counted them dead. But he once again dug his toes in about giving up his kingdom to Jason. However, Medea soon thought of a way to put him on the spot.
She told him she had the secret of restoring youth and laid on a demonstration by boiling a ram in a cauldron into which she had put a lot of herbs. When she pulled the ram out it had turned into a nice little lamb. The King asked to be made young too; so they prepared another cauldron and put him in it. As my readers will have guessed, Medea didn’t put the right herbs in with him so the old fool was boiled alive.
Jason thought it such a scurvy trick that he refused to inherit the kingdom through her wicked deed. Instead he took a run-out powder on her and set off on his travels again. While staying in Corinth he fell in love with the King’s daughter, a girl called Glauce, and decided to take her as his second wife. When Medea heard about this she pretended not to mind and sent Glauce a present of a beautiful wedding dress, but actually she was hopping mad and had first sprayed the garment with a subtle poison. When poor Glauce put it on it stuck to her flesh and burnt her to death, just as the shirt of Nessus did Hercules.
Not content with having spoiled Jason’s fun, Medea then murdered the three children she had had by him. Feeling that to be the limit, he made up his mind to do her in. But by her magic arts she summoned up a chariot drawn by dragons and got away in it. Having lost Glauce and his children, and then Medea giving him the slip, sent him absolutely berserk and he killed himself.
From
the above it will be seen that Jason did not have at all a happy life. But that was largely his own fault for having failed to keep his eye on the ball, and letting Pelias make him tight in the first place. All things considered, too, I don’t think he deserves to be looked on as one of the top Heroes. He wouldn’t have got anywhere without Medea, would he?
* * * * *
Robbie felt that the ending to this chapter was still a little weak but, during his re-writing, he had improved it considerably; so, pleased with his day’s work, he went happily to bed.
First thing on Thursday morning, he ran downstairs to collect his post and hurried back to his room with it. It consisted entirely of replies to his advertisement, and there was a great stack of them; many more than he had expected.
Having opened several, he soon saw the reason. The idea of carrying out light secretarial duties for a young gentleman, and at the same time making a motor tour of the Peloponnesus, clearly held a strong appeal for a lot of young women in Athens. Even a number who already had jobs were prepared to sacrifice them in Robbie’s interest, and several enclosed photographs.
This took him by surprise for, when he had drafted his advertisement, the idea of employing a woman had never entered his thoughts. Had he been a more sophisticated young man, he might have decided from the first to have a woman drive him and, when picking the most attractive applicant from a number of pretty girls, all sorts of interesting possibilities might have crossed his mind.
But the prospect of having a young woman as his sole companion, perhaps for several weeks, scared Robbie stiff. All girls held a frightening, if attractive, mystery for him that he still lacked the courage to explore. He had wanted a man to whom he could talk, and experience told him that when left alone with an attractive woman he usually dried up within a quarter of an hour. To have to strive to find things to say to a girl, day after day, would prove positive torture. On looking through the photographs, too, another aspect of the matter struck him. Perhaps, while picnicking in some lonely spot, he might be overcome by one of those urges he sometimes felt and, as he saw it, there being little chance that the lady would be willing to respond to his caresses, a most shaming and miserable situation would ensue.
Mayhem in Greece Page 17
