rts beat fast within their breasts.

And he sung the song of Perseus, how the Gods led him over land and sea,
and how he slew the loathly Gorgon, and won himself a peerless bride;
and how he sits now with the Gods upon Olympus, a shining star in the
sky, immortal with his immortal bride, and honoured by all men below.

So Orpheus sang, and the Sirens, answering each other across the golden
sea, till Orpheus's voice drowned the Sirens, and the heroes caught
their oars again.

And they cried: "We will be men like Perseus, and we will dare and
suffer to the last. Sing us his song again, brave Orpheus, that we may
forget the Sirens and their spell."

And as Orpheus sang, they dashed their oars into the sea, and kept time
to his music, as they fled fast away; and the Sirens' voices died behind
them, in the hissing of the foam along their wake.

But Butes swam to the shore, and knelt down before the Sirens, and
cried, "Sing on! sing on!" But he could say no more; for a charmed sleep
came over him, and a pleasant humming in his ears; and he sank all along
upon the pebbles, and forgot all heaven and earth, and never looked at
that sad beach around him, all strewn with the bones of men.

Then slowly rose up those three fair sisters, with a cruel smile upon
their lips; and slowly they crept down toward him, like leopards who
creep upon their prey; and their hands were like the talons of eagles,
as they stept across the bones of their victims to enjoy their cruel
feast.

But fairest Aphrodite saw him from the highest Idalian peak, and she
pitied his youth and his beauty, and leapt up from her golden throne;
and like a falling star she cleft the sky, and left a trail of
glittering light, till she stooped to the Isle of the Sirens, and
snatched their prey from their claws. And she lifted Butes as he lay
sleeping, and wrapt him in a golden mist; and she bore him to the peak
of Lilybaeum; and he slept there many a pleasant year.

But when the Sirens saw that they were conquered, they shrieked for envy
and rage, and leapt from the beach into the sea, and were changed into
rocks until this day.

Then they came to the straits by Lilybaeum, and saw Sicily, the
three-cornered island, under which Enceladus the giant lies groaning day
and night, and when he turns the earth quakes, and his breath bursts out
in roaring flames from the highest cone of AEtna, above the chestnut
woods. And there Charybdis caught them in its fearful coil