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 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV winds of heaven on fluttering wings, surely I should be preferred to all suitors as your son-in-law. But now I shall try to add to these great gifts the gift of service, too, if only the gods will favour me. That she be mine if saved by my valouris my bargain." The parents accept the condition-for who would refuse? and beg him to save her, promising him a kingdom as dowrv in addition. But see! as a swift ship with its sharp beak plows the waves, driven by stout rowers' sweating arms, so does the monster come, rolling back the water from either side as his breast surges through. And now he was as far from the cliff as is the space through which a Baleai ic sling can send its whizzing bullet; when suddenly the youth, springing up from the earth, mounted high into the clouds. When the monster saw the hero's shadow on the surface of the sea, he savagely attacked the shadow. And as the bird of Jove, when it has seen in an open field a serpent sunning its mottled body, swoops down upon him from behind; and, lest the serpent twist back his deadly fangs, the bird buries deep his sharp claws in the creature's scaly neck; so did Perseus, plunging headlong in a swift swoop through the empty air, attack the roaring nionster from above, and in his right shoulder buried his sword clear down to the curved hook. Smarting under the deep wound, the creature now reared himself high in air, now plunged beneath the waves, now turned like a fierce wild-boar when around him a noisy pack of hounds give tongue. Perseus eludes the greedy fangs by help of his swift wings; and where the vulnerable points lie open to attack. he smites with his hooked sword, now at the back, thick-set with barnacles, now on the sides, now where the tail is most slender and changes into 229