Half A Hundred Hero Tales Part 31

But his comrades were jealous of the favor bestowed on the young hunter. They murmured amongst themselves, and said, "Who is this upstart youth who, without asking our leave, bestows on his lady-love the spoils that belong to us all?" And they s.n.a.t.c.hed away the trophy.

This was more than the warlike prince could bear. Mad with anger and indignation, he plunged his sword into the breast of his uncle Plexippus (who had been the moving spirit in the protest), crying, "This will teach thee not to s.n.a.t.c.h away another's honors." And before long his blade was reeking with the blood of Toxeus, who seemed half disposed to avenge his brother's death.

Meanwhile, Queen Althaea had heard of her son's victory over the monster, and was on her way to the temples of the G.o.ds with thankofferings, when she beheld the dead bodies of her brothers being borne from the field. All her joy was turned to sorrow; with a shriek of horror she hastened back home to put on mourning. But when she learnt who was the author of their death, grief vanished and gave place to a thirst for vengeance.

She bethought herself of the brand which the Fates had given her, and which she had kept so carefully, knowing that her son's life depended on it. Now this fatal wood was to be the means of punis.h.i.+ng the son for the murder of her brothers.

At her bidding a fire was kindled. Holding the fatal billet in her ruthless hand, she moaned, "Ye Fates, I both avenge and commit a crime. With death must death be repaid. He deserves to die, and yet the thought of his death appalls me. Oh, that thou hadst been burnt, unnatural son, when an infant, in that first fire!" So saying, with trembling hands, she threw the fatal brand into the midst of the fire.

And the brand, as it was caught by the flames, seemed to utter a dying groan.

Meleager, far away, was seized with sudden pains. He felt his entrails scorched by secret fires; bravely he bore the torture. His one regret was that he was doomed to die an inglorious death, and he envied the fate of Ancaeus. With his last breath he invoked a blessing on his aged father, his brother, and dear sisters--aye, and on his cruel mother.

As the blaze kindled by Althaea rose and fell, so his torments waxed and waned. Both lives flickered out, and his spirit vanished into the light air.

In Calydon, young and old, n.o.ble and serf, were all lamenting. The matrons tore their hair as they bewailed the untimely end of their brave young prince. Aged Oeneus abased himself on the ground, with dust on his white locks and wrinkled brow, bemoaning that he had lived to see that day. To the anguished mother, too, came tardy repentance.

Natural affection had now gained the mastery over anger and revenge.

"Wretch that I am!" she cried. "To the loss of my dear brothers, by my own ruthless deed I have added the loss of my dearer son." Horrified at her act, she could no longer bear to see the sun, and with a sword put an end to her misery and shame.

THE STORY OF DaeDALUS AND ICARUS

BY M. M. BIRD

Athens is the eye of Greece, the mother of science and the arts, and of all her world-famed artists none is more famous than Daedalus, the sculptor, the architect, the first of air-men. It was he who taught men to carve in wood the human form divine, as the images prove that the Greeks named after him _daedala_. It was he who planned for Minos the labyrinth of which you have read elsewhere; and it was he who first made wings that men might fly like birds. Of this, his best and greatest invention, how he came to contrive it, and how disastrously it ended, you shall now hear.

When Theseus had slain the Minotaur, King Minos was exceedingly wrath with his architect for betraying the secret of the labyrinth--a secret that none but the king and its contriver knew. So Daedalus, and with him his young son Icarus, was cast into prison, and there they languished long. But Pasiphae the queen, who loved not her sovereign lord and loved her favorite artist, contrived their escape and hid them in a sea-cave. Still the cave was little better than a prison. It was dark and dank, and they dared only venture out at night for fear their hiding-place should be discovered.

But though the artist's hands were idle, his busy brain was ever plotting and scheming. One day, as he sat at the cave's mouth watching the seagulls as they floated past on poised wings or mounted from the waves and with a stroke of their pinions were high in air, there flashed upon his brain the splendor of a sudden thought--With the wings of a bird I too could fly!

At once the father and the son set to work to make themselves wings.

The osprey and the sea-eagle, whose aeries were on the rocky heights, the father trapped with cunning snares, and from the combs of the wild bees on the hillside the son collected wax. So with infinite pains, and after endless failures, at last a pair of pinions were made. The upper row of quills were bound together by strong threads of twine on a framework of bone, and to them the bottom feathers were joined by beeswax. Like all great inventors, Daedalus had conquered Nature by imitating her.

At first young Icarus had watched his father with eager curiosity, but like a boy, he had soon grown impatient, and, as Daedalus still persevered, he looked upon him as a harmless lunatic. What, then, were his delight and surprise when, one morning as he awoke, he beheld his father floating in mid-air before the cave's mouth.

"Father," he cried, embracing him as he alighted, "what rapture! Let me too try if I can fly. Make me a pair of wings, and together we will escape from this island prison."

"My boy," the grave sire replied, "thou shalt surely try, but flight is no easy matter, and thou must first learn thy lesson. Mark well my words. Steer always a middle flight; there only safety lies. If you fly low the sea spray will wet your flagging feathers, if high the sun will melt the wax. Keep me in sight, and swerve not to the north or south."

Icarus promised to obey, but so fired was he with the thought of flying that he listened with half an ear, and soon forgot his father's directions.

The second pair of wings were made and strapped with anxious care to the son's shoulder-blades. And, as the parent birds eye their callow nestlings when they essay their first flight, so Daedalus, as he mounted upwards, oft looked back on the boy and again repeated his warnings.

The people were stirring in the towns, the countrymen were out in the fields after their beasts, and all the folk stayed in their morning tasks to gaze at these two strange creatures that floated overhead.

"It is Daedalus and his son," they cried. "They have become G.o.ds."

Minos in his palace was told of the strange spectacle. From his terrace he watched in impotent wrath the two dark specks far out to sea, that thus escaped him.

At first Icarus kept close to his father, but soon he had lost all sense of danger, and with the reckless wantonness of youth, determined to go his own way. He reveled in the strong free strokes of his great wings; he mounted ever higher and higher, till the sea was spread below him like a blue plain, and the sandy islands showed like cloths of gold.

Daedalus was winging his careful way lower down, below the scattered clouds, close above the golden islets, and shouted to his son to return. But Icarus, drunk with the delights of flight, mounted ever higher, up into the fierce rays of Phoebus, the Sun-G.o.d, who held out burning arms to the adventurous youth, beckoning him to race his fiery car across the heavens.

The horrified father, floating on outspread wings over the aegean Sea, looked up to see his boy like a tiny speck in the sun's rays. He knew the fierce heat of those rays; he knew that the wings were only fastened on by wax that could not hold against that scorching heat.

And lo! as he looked, the speck grew larger and larger, and headlong down the sky he beheld Icarus falling, falling, his limp wings sagging from his shoulders, his frantic arms struggling to spread them and stay his fall. The drooping wings could not uphold him; he came whirling down the hissing air, and his agonized father watched his helpless boy fall into the blue waves beneath. For a moment he saw him struggle feebly, and then, like a bubble, he sank, and the unruffled waters lay calm and smiling as before.

By the sad sea sh.o.r.e of the aegean, where he landed after that disastrous flight, Daedalus raised a cenotaph to his lost son, and thereon he laid the wings, once the artist's pride, and now the father's bane. "Icarus, O my Icarus!" he cried; and still those waters echo the name of Icarus.

SCYLLA, THE DAUGHTER OF NISUS

BY MRS. GUY E. LLOYD

In Crete, the greatest and most powerful of the isles of Greece and the cradle of Jupiter, there once stood a splendid palace where lived the wealthy King Minos. To this palace came as guests one day Nisus, King of Megara, and his fair daughter Scylla; and there they abode many days, with every day fresh delights sought out by King Minos to give them pleasure. And Scylla, like a fond and foolish maiden, was dazzled by the pomp and by the flattery of King Minos, and he seemed to her the greatest and wisest of living men, and she would fain have tarried there forever, hearkening to his words and admiring all his riches.

But King Nisus would not longer stay, and they departed, bearing with them rich gifts from the generous king, and returned to their own castle at Megara. Very small and mean did her home seem to Scylla now, and often would she climb to the top of a turret that looked over the sea, and thence she would gaze and gaze towards the south, and her thoughts would fly back to the fair island of Crete with its cities and its palaces, and its strong and n.o.ble king, till she envied the birds that skimmed past her turret on swift, light wings. They could fly to Crete whenever they would, and settle on the palace eaves; but the princess must sit still in her high turret, and hide even her longing away within her heart.

The days pa.s.sed by, and Nisus went no more to Crete, but Androgeos, son of King Minos, came to Megara and abode there some little s.p.a.ce, and the king and the princess welcomed him kindly for his father's sake. After his visit Androgeos would not sail back straight to his father's halls; he was minded first to see the great city of Athens, the eye of Greece. King Nisus warned him that the road across the mountains was difficult and dangerous, and that many robbers hid among those hills; but the prince would not be warned. He went his way, and the next news of him that came was that he had been set upon by bandits and murdered.

"He should have hearkened to the counsel of older and wiser men," said King Nisus. "I grieve for the youth, but he brought it on himself."

But when Minos the king heard that his son Androgeos was dead, he was stricken with a great grief, and he sent to King Nisus demanding blood-money, since the prince was slain in the lands of the Megarians.

But Nisus refused to pay.

"It was no fault of mine," he said; "and I shall make no reparation for the death of one whose blood is on his own head."

Then was King Minos wroth, and threatened to make good in person his rightful claim.

So it chanced on a day when the Princess Scylla looked forth from her turret over the sea, as her custom was, she saw great s.h.i.+ps, with bellying white sails, drawing near from the south; and as they rose upon the heaving billows, the sunbeams glinted back from many a s.h.i.+eld and spear, for they carried the mailed warriors of King Minos coming to wrest from King Nisus blood-money for the death of Androgeos, son to King Minos, who had been slain by robbers on the lands of King Nisus.

Then stepped forth from one of the s.h.i.+ps the herald of King Minos, and he came into the palace of Megara and proclaimed his master's will to all that stood there.

But Nisus the king frowned upon the herald. "I will pay no blood-money," he said. "Go your ways to your master and tell him so.

Better were it for him to be satisfied with this answer of mine and to turn and hie him home. Little use is it for mortal men to strive against those who are protected by the undying G.o.ds. I care not for the wrath of King Minos, and the spears of his warriors have no more power to hurt my people than the bulrushes that children gather in the fields and break in mimic warfare with each other."

"Thou speakest in riddles, King Nisus," replied the herald; "but my master is of kin to the immortals, and it cannot be that they will let him quail before a petty king like thee."

So the herald turned and went back to his s.h.i.+ps; and when King Minos heard that King Nisus refused to pay the blood-money, he made him ready for battle.

Then the men of Crete fought stoutly against the men of Megara, and day after day the tide of battle surged around the walls of the town.

But strive as they might the men of Crete won no inch of ground, but the men of Megara drove their foes before them like sheep.

At length the warriors of King Minos began to murmur among themselves and to repeat the words that King Nisus had spoken to the herald.

"If the city of Megara is indeed defended by the deathless G.o.ds," said they, "what avails it to fight and to strive?"