But
Polydectes and his insolent friends looked full upon what Perseus
showed. "This youth would strive to frighten us with some conjuror's
trick," they said. They said no more, for they became as stones, and as
stone images they still stand in that hall in Seriphus.

He went to the shepherd's hut, and he brought Dictys from it with
Andromeda. Dictys he made king in Polydectes's stead. Then with Danae
and Andromeda, his mother and his wife, he went from Seriphus.

He did not go to Argos, the country that his grandfather had ruled
over, although the people there wanted Perseus to come to them, and be
king over them. He took the kingdom of Tiryns in exchange for that of
Argos, and there he lived with Andromeda, his lovely wife out of
Ethopia. They had a son named Perses who became the parent of the
Persian people.

The sickle-sword that had slain the Gorgon went back to Hermes, and
Hermes took Medusa's head also. That head Hermes's divine sister set
upon her shield-Medusa's head upon the shield of Pallas Athene. O may
Pallas Athene guard us all, and bring us out of this land of sands and
stone where are the deadly serpents that have come from the drops of
blood that fell from the Gorgon's head!

They turned away from the Garden of the Daughters of the Evening Land.
The Argonauts turned from where the giant shape of Atlas stood against
the sky and they went toward the Tritonian Lake. But not all of them
reached the Argo. On his way back to the ship, Nauplius, the helmsman,
met his death.

A sluggish serpent was in his way--it was not a serpent that would
strike at one who turned from it. Nauplius trod upon it, and the
serpent lifted its head up and bit his foot. They raised him on their
shoulders and they hurried back with him. But his limbs became numb,
and when they laid him down on the shore of the lake he stayed
moveless. Soon he grew cold. They dug a grave for Nauplius beside the
lake, and in that desert land they set up his helmsman's oar in the
middle of his tomb of heaped stones.

And now like a snake that goes writhing this way and that way and that
cannot find the cleft in the rock that leads to its lair, the Argo went
hither and thither striving to find an outlet from that lake. No outlet
could they find and the way of their home-going seemed lost to them
again. Then Orpheus prayed to the son of Nereus, to Triton, whose name
was on that lake, to aid them.

Then Triton appeared. He stretched out his hand