Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/82



There, amid the rocks, lay the Medusa asleep, with half of the snakes awake and squirming restlessly. With his eyes on the reflection in the shield, the son of Danae swooped quickly downward, cut off the monster's head and grasped its clammy, lifeless locks in his hand.

Winging his way over northern Africa, Perseus came to the mountain on which the Titan Atlas sat, hunched up on a peak with his shoulders sagging under the weight of the heavens. Somewhat weary after his long flight, the youth landed in the Garden of the Hesperides, which lay at the foot of the mountain, and watched the maidens, daughters of Hesperus, the silver Evening Star, as they danced around a shining tree of golden apples. But he dared not touch or even go near the apples, for around the trunk was coiled old Laden, a monstrous dragon whose watchful eyes were never closed. He then climbed up to the top of the mountain to talk to Atlas, but Atlas did not receive him hospitably for an oracle had declared that the day would come when a son of Jupiter would take his golden fruit, and he had therefore forbidden strangers to come into his land. Perseus begged for just one night of rest, but Atlas roared in anger and would not even listen to him. "Have a rest yourself, then!" shouted our hero, and held up the Gorgon's head. The great giant gave one startled look, which was plenty, for the features of his face grew stiff as weather-beaten ledges, his bones congealed like a mass of Tock, and his beard stuck out like a forest of naked trees! Perseus hurriedly swung the head behind him and, a trifle panic-stricken perhaps, flew away over the African desert with the blood falling drip, drip, drip on the hot, gray sands.