from the voyage for ever. And the maidens knew that there was
something in the cry of the ship that might not be gainsaid, and they
put their hands before their faces, and they said no other word.

Then said Hypsipyle, the queen, "I, too, am a ruler, Jason, and I know
that there are great commands that we have to obey. Go, then, to the
Argo. Ah, neither I nor the women of Lemnos will stay your going now.
But to-morrow speak to us from the deck of the ship and bid us
farewell. Do not go from us in the night, Jason."

Jason and the Argonauts went from Hypsipyle's hall. The maidens who
were left behind wept together. All but Hypsipyle. She sat on the
throne of King Thoas and she had Polyxo, her nurse, tell her of the
ways of Jason's voyage as he had told of them, and of all that he would
have to pass through. When the other Lemnian women slept she put her
head upon her nurse's, knees and wept; bitterly Hypsipyle wept, but
softly, for she would not have the others hear her weeping.

By the coming of the morning's light the Argonauts had made all ready
for their sailing. They were standing on the deck when the light came,
and they saw the Lemnian women come to the shore. Each looked at her
friend aboard the Argo, and spoke, and went away. And last, Hypsipyle,
the queen, came. "Farewell, Hypsipyle," Jason said to her, and she, in
her strange way of speaking, said:

"What you told us I have remembered--how you will come to the dangerous
passage that leads into the Sea of Pontus, and how by the flight of a
pigeon you will know whether or not you may go that way. O Jason, let
the dove you fly when you come to that dangerous place be Hypsipyle's."

She showed a pigeon held in her hands. She loosed it, and the pigeon
alighted on the ship, and stayed there on pink feet, a white-feathered
pigeon. Jason took up the pigeon and held it in his hands, and the Argo
drew swiftly away from the Lemnian land.

XI. THE PASSAGE OF THE SYMPLEGADES

They came near Salmydessus, where Phineus, the wise king, ruled, and
they sailed past it; they sighted the pile of stones, with the oar
upright upon it that they had raised on the seashore over the body of
Tiphys, the skillful steersman whom they had lost; they sailed on until
they heard a sound that grew more and more thunderous, and then the
heroes said to each other, "Now we come to the Symplegades and the
dread passage into the Sea of Pontus."

It was then that Jason cried out: "Ah, wh