And Lynceus the quick eyed saw him coming, while he
was still many a mile away, and cried: "I see a hundred ships, like a
flock of white swans, far in the east." And at that they rowed hard,
like heroes; but the ships came nearer every hour.
Then Medeia, the dark witch maiden, laid a cruel and a cunning plot; for
she killed Absyrtus her young brother, and cast him into the sea, and
said: "Ere my father can take up his corpse and bury it, he must wait
long, and be left far behind."
And all the heroes shuddered, and looked one at the other for shame; yet
they did not punish that dark witch woman, because she had won for them
the golden fleece.
And when Aietes came to the place, he saw the floating corpse; and he
stopped a long while, and bewailed his son, and took him up, and went
home. But he sent on his sailors toward the westward, and bound them by
a mighty curse: "Bring back to me that dark witch woman, that she may
die a dreadful death. But if you return without her, you shall die by
the same death yourselves."
So the Argonauts escaped for that time; but Father Zeus saw that foul
crime; and out of the heavens he sent a storm, and swept the ship far
from her course. Day after day the storm drove her, amid foam and
blinding mist, till they knew no longer where they were, for the sun was
blotted from the skies. And at last the ship struck on a shoal, amid low
isles of mud and sand, and the waves rolled over her and through her,
and the heroes lost all hope of life.
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