at pile of stones, in which they fixed upright
his steering oar. Then they set sail again, and Nauplius was made the
steersman of the ship.

The course was not so clear to Nauplius as it had been to Tiphys. The
steersman did not find his bearings, and for many days and nights the
Argo was driven on a backward course. They came to an island that they
knew to be that Island of Lemnos that they had passed on the first days
of the voyage, and they resolved to rest there for a while, and then to
press on for the passage into the Sea of Pontus.

They brought the Argo near the shore. They blew trumpets and set the
loudest-voiced of the heroes to call out to those upon the island. But
no answer came to them, and all day the Argo lay close to the island.

There were hidden people watching them, people with bows in their hands
and arrows laid along the bowstrings. And the people who thus
threatened the unknowing Argonauts were women and young girls.

There were no men upon the Island of Lemnos. Years before a curse had
fallen upon the people of that island, putting strife between the men
and the women. And the women had mastered the men and had driven them
away from Lemnos. Since then some of the women had grown old, and the
girls who were children when their fathers and brothers had been
banished were now of an age with Atalanta, the maiden who went with the
Argonauts.

They chased the wild beasts of the island, and they tilled the fields,
and they kept in good repair the houses that were built before the
banishing of the men. The older women served those who were younger,
and they had a queen, a girl whose name was Hypsipyle.

The women who watched with bows in their hands would have shot their
arrows at the Argonauts if Hypsipyle's nurse, Polyxo, had not stayed
them. She forbade them to shoot at the strangers until she had brought
to them the queen's commands.

She hastened to the palace and she found the young queen weaving at a
loom. She told her about the ship and the strangers on board the ship,
and she asked the queen what word she should bring to the guardian
maidens.

"Before you give a command, Hypsipyle," said Polyxo, the nurse,
"consider these words of mine. We, the elder women, are becoming
ancient now; in a few years we will not be able to serve you, the
younger women, and in a few years more we will have gone into the grave
and our places will know us no more. And you, the younger women, will
be becoming