"Give me the tooth, that I may bite him." But Perseus, when he saw
that they were foolish and proud, and did not love the children of
men, left off pitying them. Then he stepped close to them, and
watched till they passed the eye from hand to hand. And as they
groped about between themselves, he held out his own hand gently,
till one of them put the eye into it, fancying that it was the hand
of her sister. Then he sprang back, and laughed, and cried:

"Cruel and proud old women, I have your eye; and I will throw it
into the sea, unless you tell me the path to the Gorgon, and swear
to me that you tell me right."

Then they wept, and chattered, and scolded; but in vain. They were
forced to tell the truth, though, when they told it, Perseus could
hardly make out the road.

"You must go," they said, "foolish boy, to the southward, into the
ugly glare of the sun, till you come to Atlas the Giant, who holds
the heaven and the earth apart. And you must ask his daughters, the
Hesperides, who are young and foolish like yourself. And now give us
back our eye, for we have forgotten all the rest."

So Perseus gave them back their eye. And he leaped away to the
southward, leaving the snow and the ice behind. And the terns and
the sea gulls swept laughing round his head, and called to him to
stop and play, and the dolphins gambolled up as he passed, and
offered to carry him on their back. And all night long the sea
nymphs sang sweetly. Day by day the sun rose higher and leaped more
swiftly into the sea at night, and more swiftly out of the sea at
dawn; while Perseus skimmed over the billows like a sea gull, and