But Perseus leaped away to the southward, leaving the snow and the
ice behind: past the isle of the Hyperboreans, and the tin isles,
and the long Iberian shore, while the sun rose higher day by day
upon a bright blue summer sea. And the terns and the sea-gulls
swept laughing round his head, and called to him to stop and play,
and the dolphins gambolled up as he passed, and offered to carry
him on their backs. And all night long the sea-nymphs sang
sweetly, and the Tritons blew upon their conchs, as they played
round Galataea their queen, in her car of pearled shells. Day by
day the sun rose higher, and leaped more swiftly into the sea at
night, and more swiftly out of the sea at dawn; while Perseus
skimmed over the billows like a sea-gull, and his feet were never
wetted; and leapt on from wave to wave, and his limbs were never
weary, till he saw far away a mighty mountain, all rose-red in the
setting sun. Its feet were wrapped in forests, and its head in
wreaths of cloud; and Perseus knew that it was Atlas, who holds the
heavens and the earth apart.

He came to the mountain, and leapt on shore, and wandered upward,
among pleasant valleys and waterfalls, and tall trees and strange
ferns and flowers; but there was no smoke rising from any glen, nor
house, nor sign of man.

At last he heard sweet voices singing; and he guessed that he was
come to the garden of the Nymphs, the daughters of the Evening
Star.

They sang like nightingales among the thickets, and Perseus stopped
to hear their song; but the words which they spoke he could not