64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



her that she was fairer than the sea-beauty, Atergatis, and for this 

 Neptune had decreed that all the land of the Ethiopians should he 

 drowned and destroyed unless Andromeda was delivered up as a sac- 

 rifice to the dreadful sea-monster. When Perseus, dro)>ping down to 

 learn why this maiden was chained to the rocks, heard from An- 

 dromeda's lips the story of her woes, he laughed with joy. Here was 

 an adventure just to his liking, and besides, unlike his previous ad- 

 ventures, it involved the fate of a beautiful woman with whom he 

 was already in love. Could he save her ? Well, Avouldn't he ! The 

 sea-monster might frighten a kingdom full of Ethiops, but it could 

 not shake the nerves of a hero from Greece. He whispered words of 

 encouragement to Andromeda, who could scarce believe the good 

 news that a champion had come to defend her after all her friends 

 and royal relations had deserted her. Neither could she feel much 

 confidence in her young champion's powers when suddenly her horri- 

 fied gaze met the awful monster of the deep advancing to his feast ! 

 But Perseus, with a warning to Andromeda not to look at what he 

 was about to do, sprang with his winged sandals up into the air. And 

 then, as Charles Kingsley has so beautifully told the story — 



" On came the great sea-monster, coasting along like a huge black 

 galley, lazily breasting the ripple, and stopping at times by creek or 

 headland to watch for the laughter of girls at their bleaching, or cattle 

 pawing on the sand-hills, or boys bathing on the beach. His great 

 sides were fringed with clustering shells and sea-weeds, and the water 

 gurgled in and out of his wide jaws as he rolled along, dripping and 

 glistening in the beams of the morning sun. At last he saw Androm- 

 eda, and shot forward to take his prey, while the waves foamed white 

 behind him, and before him the fish fled leaping. 



"Then down from the height of the air fell Perseus like a shoot- 

 ing-star — down to the crest of the waves, while Andromeda hid her 

 face as he shouted. And then there was silence for a while. 



"At last she looked up trembling, and saw Perseus springing 

 toward her ; and instead of the monster, a long, black rock, with the 

 sea rippling quietly round it." 



Perseus had turned the monster into stone by holding the awful 

 head of Medusa before his eyes ; and it was fear lest Andromeda her- 

 self might see the Gorgon's head, and suffer the fate of all who looked 

 upon it, that had led him to forbid her watching him when he attacked 

 her enemy. Of course he married her, and of course Cassiopeia, An- 

 dromeda's mother, and Cepheus, her father, gave their daughter's 

 rescuer a royal welcome, and all the Ethiops rose up and blessed him 

 for ridding the land of the monster. And now, if we choose, we can, 

 any fair night, see the principal characters of this old romance shining 

 in starry garb in the sky. Aratus saw them there in his day, more 

 than two hundred years before Christ, and has left this description in 

 his "Skies,'' as translated bv Poste : 



