us, the lonely maidens, who dwell for ever far away from Gods and
men.'

But he refused, and they told him his road, and said, 'Take with
you this magic fruit, which, if you eat once, you will not hunger
for seven days. For you must go eastward and eastward ever, over
the doleful Lybian shore, which Poseidon gave to Father Zeus, when
he burst open the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, and drowned the
fair Lectonian land. And Zeus took that land in exchange, a fair
bargain, much bad ground for a little good, and to this day it lies
waste and desert with shingle, and rock, and sand.'

Then they kissed Perseus, and wept over him, and he leapt down the
mountain, and went on, lessening and lessening like a sea-gull,
away and out to sea.



PART IV--HOW PERSEUS CAME TO THE AETHIOPS



So Perseus flitted onward to the north-east, over many a league of
sea, till he came to the rolling sand-hills and the dreary Lybian
shore.

And he flitted on across the desert: over rock-ledges, and banks
of shingle, and level wastes of sand, and shell-drifts bleaching in
the sunshine, and the skeletons of great sea-monsters, and dead
bones of ancient giants, strewn up and down upon the old sea-floor.