And why return home at all, brave heroes, and face the long seas
again, and the Bosphorus, and the stormy Euxine, and double all your
toil? There is many a fair land round these coasts, which waits for
gallant men like you. Better to settle there, and build a city, and let
Aietes and Colchis help themselves."
Then a murmur rose among the Colchi, and some cried, "He has spoken
well"; and some, "We have had enough of roving, we will sail the seas
no more!" And the chief said at last, "Be it so, then; a plague she has
been to us, and a plague to the house of her father, and a plague she
will be to you. Take her, since you are no wiser; and we will sail away
toward the north."
Then Alcinous gave them food, and water, and garments, and rich presents
of all sorts; and he gave the same to the Minuai, and sent them all away
in peace.
So Jason kept the dark witch maiden to breed him woe and shame; and the
Colchi went northward into the Adriatic, and settled, and built towns
along the shore.
Then the heroes rowed away to the eastward, to reach Hellas their
beloved land; but a storm came down upon them, and swept them far away
toward the south. And they rowed till they were spent with struggling,
through the darkness and the blinding rain, but where they were they
could not tell, and they gave up all hope of life. And at last they
touched the ground, and when daylight came they waded to the shore; and
saw nothing round but sand, and desolate salt pools; for they had come
to the quicksands of the Syrtis, and the dreary treeless flats, which
lie between Numidia and Cyrene, on the burning shore of Africa.
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