Favorite Greek Myths (Yesterday's Classics) by Lilian Stoughton Hyde Page A

changed to stone by the sight of the Medusa's face.
    Keeping his eyes on the shield, Perseus dropped lightly down, and in a flash he had cut off the Medusa's head and dropped it into the magic pouch. Then he sped away on the winged sandals, and it was well that he had these sandals and Pluto's helmet to make him invisible; for the remaining Gorgons woke and sprang after him with a terrible cry. He could hear the rushing of their gold-feathered wings, the rattle of their brass claws, and the hissing of the snakes on their heads. But these sounds and even their terrible cry soon died away; for the Gorgons could not follow far a foe they could not see. So Perseus got safe away with the Medusa's head.
    Minerva and Mercury had been near Perseus all the time, although, since he left the Garden of the Hesperides, they had not chosen to make themselves visible to him. Minerva heard the shrill cry of the Gorgons, and she set it into a musical instrument, which she made on the spot, of thin-beaten bronze, taken, no doubt, from the hard scales of the Medusa. Many people have said that this musical instrument was the flute, but as Minerva was a war goddess, I am sure that it must have been some kind of a war trumpet, and it probably sounded like our fife. Afterward the goddess set the dreadful head of the Medusa on her shield, or sometimes she wore it on her ægis. But before Perseus returned the shield to Minerva and presented her with Medusa's head, he met with many more adventures.

II
Perseus and Andromeda
    W HEN the Gorgon sisters had left off following Perseus, he began to fly more slowly with the golden wings of his sandals, and to look down at the mountains and rivers underneath, to see what country he was passing over. When he saw on the tops of the mountains a pink glow from the coming sun, he knew that it would soon be day.
    All at once from a clear sky he heard what seemed like a peal of thunder. As the sound echoed back from a hundred hills, it seemed strangely human, like the sighing groan of some gigantic being. Then he saw what appeared to be a weird-looking mountain, with its top among the clouds; but, on coming nearer, he discovered that what he had taken for a mountain was a huge, clumsy giant, who stood holding up the sky on his head and shoulders. The giant had white hair hanging down around his face, and he seemed very tired with the weight of the sky, which had now become yellow with the sunrise light, and looked like an enormous brass bowl turned upside down. No wonder that the poor old giant groaned with the weight of it! Perseus knew that this must be the giant Atlas, of whom he had often heard.
    Atlas was as much interested in Perseus as Perseus was in him. For the nymphs who kept the Garden of the Hesperides, the same who had given Perseus the winged sandals and the magic pouch, were the nieces of Atlas, and had told him all about Perseus. This poor giant, with the great weight of the sky on his shoulders, wished that he might get a glimpse of that wonder-working head so that he could be turned into hard, unfeeling rock. Then, he thought, he could hold up the sky forever and not mind the weight of it.
    So when he saw Perseus, he hailed him and asked him if he did not carry the Medusa's head in his pouch. When Perseus said that he did, Atlas asked to see it. Perseus warned the giant that the bare sight of this head would turn any living thing into stone; but when Atlas explained that this was just what he wanted, Perseus held up the head for an instant.
    Soon after, on his way to Seriphus, Perseus turned and looked back. Where he had left the giant Atlas, he was sure that he now saw a lofty mountain, with snow at the top and forests on the sides. He began to think that he had been dreaming, and that what he had taken for Atlas was really a mountain all the time.
    He next flew over a sandy desert, where the sun shone very hot. Here he began to notice a great number of ugly, venomous snakes crawling in all