igher,
higher still, and when he saw the radiant sun-god smiling down on
him, the warning of Daedalus was forgotten. As he had excelled other
lads in foot races, now did Icarus wish to excel the birds themselves.
Daedalus he left far behind, and still upwards he mounted. So strong he
felt, so fearless was he, that to him it seemed that he could storm
Olympus, that he could call to Apollo as he swept past him in his
flight, and dare him to race for a wager from the AEgean Sea to where
the sun-god's horses took their nightly rest by the trackless seas of
the unknown West.

In terror his father watched him, and as he called to him in a voice
of anguished warning that was drowned by the whistling rush of the air
currents through the wings of Icarus and the moist whisper of the
clouds as through them he cleft a way for himself, there befell the
dreaded thing. It seemed as though the strong wings had begun to lose
their power. Like a wounded bird Icarus fluttered, lunged sidewise
from the straight, clean line of his flight, recovered himself, and
fluttered again. And then, like the bird into whose soft breast the
sure hand of a mighty archer has driven an arrow, downwards he fell,
turning over and yet turning again, downwards, ever downwards, until
he fell with a plunge into the sea that still was radiant in shining
emerald and translucent blue.

Then did the car of Apollo drive on. His rays had slain one who was
too greatly daring, and now they fondled the little white feathers
that had fallen from the broken wings and floated on the water like
the petals of a torn flower.

On the dead, still face of Icarus they shone, and they spangled as if
with diamonds the wet plumage that still, widespread, bore him up on
the waves.

Stricken at heart was Daedalus, but there was no time to lament his
son's untimely end, for even now the black-prowed ships of Minos might
be in pursuit. Onward he flew to safety, and in Sicily built a temple
to Apollo, and there hung up his wings as a propitiatory offering to
the god who had slain his son.

And when grey night came down on that part of the sea that bears the
name of Icarus to this day, still there floated the body of the boy
whose dreams had come true. For only a little while had he known the
exquisite realisation of dreamed-of potentialities, for only a few
hours tasted the sweetness of perfect pleasure, and then, by an
over-daring flight, had lost it all for ever.

The sorrowing