nd after one or two efforts, he
found that by waving his arms he could winnow the air and cleave it, as a
swimmer does the sea. He held himself aloft, wavered this way and that,
with the wind, and at last, like a great fledgling, he learned to fly.

Without delay, he fell to work on a pair of wings for the boy Icarus, and
taught him carefully how to use them, bidding him beware of rash
adventures among the stars. "Remember," said the father, "never to fly
very low or very high, for the fogs about the earth would weigh you down,
but the blaze of the sun will surely melt your feathers apart if you go
too near."

For Icarus, these cautions went in at one ear and out by the other. Who
could remember to be careful when he was to fly for the first time? Are
birds careful? Not they! And not an idea remained in the boy's head but
the one joy of escape.

The day came, and the fair wind that was to set them free. The father bird
put on his wings, and, while the light urged them to be gone, he waited to
see that all was well with Icarus, for the two could not fly hand in hand.
Up they rose, the boy after his father. The hateful ground of Crete sank
beneath them; and the country folk, who caught a glimpse of them when they
were high above the tree-tops, took it for a vision of the gods,--Apollo,
perhaps, with Cupid after him.

At first there was a terror in the joy. The wide vacancy of the air dazed
them,--a glance downward made their brains reel. But when a great wind
filled their wings, and Icarus felt himself sustained, like a halcyon-bird
in the hollow of a wave, like a child uplifted by his mother, he forgot
everything in the world but joy. He forgot Crete and the other islands
that he had passed over: he saw but vaguely that winged thing in the
distance before him that was his father Daedalus. He longed for one draught
of flight to quench the thirst of his captivity: he stretched out his arms
to the sky and made towards the highest heavens.

Alas for him! Warmer and warmer grew the air. Those arms, that had seemed
to uphold him, relaxed. His wings wavered, drooped. He fluttered his young
hands vainly,--he was falling,--and in that terror he remembered. The heat
of the sun had melted the wax from his wings; the feathers were falling,
one by one, like snowflakes; and there was none to help.

He fell like a leaf tossed down the wind, down, down, with one cry that
overtook Daedalus far away. When he returned, and sought high