By then King Aeetes was beginning to look a bit green in the gills, but he gave Jason the bag of dragons' teeth and continued to hope that our Hero would bite the dust. No sooner had Jason sown the teeth than row upon row of fierce warriors sprang up from the furrows. It was now up to Jason to kill every one of them before the sun set, but in the middle of the night Medea had whispered to him a trick for getting rid of them that would save his breath.
Doing as she had told him, he picked up a great stone boulder and heaved it right into the middle of the host that was about to set upon him. It may be that these warriors had come to life too quickly to be more than half-baked. Anyhow, none of them seemed to have seen him hurl this great stone; they only realized that it had come down in the midst of them. Those nearest where it had landed accused one of the others of having thrown it. Soon a fight started among them and they were all at one another's throats. Jason just stood looking on while the furrows were filled with blood and the field became black with corpses. By the time the sun went down there was not a single one left and the ground had swallowed them all up again. It was just as simple as that.
Jason then said to the King: 'Now, old cock. How about handing over the Fleece?'
^ But Aeetes, having been told years before by the Oracle that ii he ever parted with it his number would be up, was not prepared to commit what would have amounted to hara-kiri just to Please Jason. So he stalled for time and said: 'We'll have a chat about that in the morning.'
Actually he had already decided that the best thing he could do was to collect several hundred of his warriors together during the night and have them wipe the Argonauts off the slate next day. That his plan failed was partly due to Medea's having gone so weak in the knees over Jason, and partly owing to Aeetes's meanness. Having tumbled to what was afoot, Medea hurried off to warn the boy friend; but he and his pals wouldn't have had much chance to act on her warning if Aeetes had had the foresight to put them up in his palace. Had he done that he would have had a good chance of having them all murdered in their beds, or anyhow of preventing them from getting back to their ship. As it was the old skinflint left them to rough it on their own in a camp down by the river.
When Medea arrived they were still at supper. She told Jason that her papa meant to double-cross him and that his only chance of not being turned into cat's meat was to pinch the Fleece there and then and sail off with it before dawn. While the Argonauts jumped to it to get their vessel ready for sea, Jason set off with Medea and her young brother Absyrtus, who had tagged along with her, to the sacred grove.
Young Absyrtus trembled like a jelly when he heard the hissing of the huge poison-breathing snake that guarded the Fleece. But tackling it was just Children's Hour stuff to Medea. She bedevilled it by singing a low witches' chant, then sprinkled some magic powder she had brought with her on its eyes. That sent it to sleep, so all Jason had to do was to step over its body and tear the Fleece down from the tree to which it had been nailed.
When they got back to the ship, Medea said: 'If my pop tumbles to it that it was I who put you up to this, I shall be for the high jump. So how about taking me with you?'
Chivalry apart, by then her hip-wriggling act had got Jason where she wanted him, so he replied: 'Gladly, oh Maiden, and wilt thou honour me by becoming my bride?' or words to that effect.
So they went aboard, taking young Absyrtus with them, and by the first light the Argo was standing out to sea with the Golden Fleece nailed to the mast and all sail set.
I would not like to sully my gentle readers' ears with the sort of language King Aeetes must have used when he heard what had happened, but he was not the chap to take that sort of thing lying down. In no time at all he had manned his fleet and put to sea in pursuit, and some of his ships were so fast that it seemed certain that they would catch up with the Argo.
When the leading vessel got so close that Medea could see the face of her papa as he stood glowering in the prow, she decided on taking drastic action. She made the Argonauts kill her young brother, cut him in pieces and throw the bits overboard. As Aeetes felt bound to give his son proper burial he had to heave to in order to fish the bits out of the water, and while he was kept busy doing that the Argo managed to get away.
Although Medea had saved their bacon, Jason must have been a bit worried on discovering the sort of better-half he had taken to his bosom. The gods, too, thought that her killing her young brother in this way was a most unsporting thing to do, and they made the Argonauts pay for it in no uncertain manner.
Instead of letting the Argo have a nice trip back to Greece they gave her a very unpleasant passage. Time after time she was carried off her course by tempests and driven on to unknown shores. For months on end her wretched crew humped her over land and across mountains until they reached the Med. But there were more storms after they had re-launched her, and she was washed up in North Africa. There, for some reason, they had to carry her again over miles of desert under a blistering sun. This went on for years and years, so when at last they did manage to get home those among them who had set out as hardy youths had become middle-aged men. If I'd been one of them I must say I'd have been pretty fed up with Jason for having caused me to waste the best years of my life. Still, they had got the Fleece.
Old Pelias was still alive, and was pretty shattered at seeing them again after all this time, as he had long counted them dead. But he once again dug his toes in about giving up his kingdom to Jason. However, Medea soon thought of a way to put him on the spot.
She told him she had the secret of restoring youth and laid on a demonstration by boiling a ram in a cauldron into which she had put a lot of herbs. When she pulled the ram out it had turned into a nice little lamb. The King asked to be made young too; so they prepared another cauldron and put him in it. As my readers will have guessed, Medea didn't put the right herbs in with him so the old fool was boiled alive.
Jason thought it such a scurvy trick that he refused to inherit the kingdom through her wicked deed. Instead he took a run-out powder on her and set off on his travels again. While staying in Corinth he fell in love with the King's daughter, a girl called Glauce, and decided to take her as his second wife. When Medea heard about this she pretended not to mind and sent Glauce a present of a beautiful wedding dress, but actually she was hopping mad and had first sprayed the garment with a subtle Poison. When poor Glauce put it on it stuck to her flesh and burnt her to death, just as the shirt of Nessus did Hercules.
Not content with having spoiled Jason's fun, Medea then murdered the three children she had had by him. Feeling that to
the limit, he made up his mind to do her in. But by her magic arts she summoned up a chariot drawn by dragons and got away in it. Having lost Glauce and his children, and then Medea giving him the slip, sent him absolutely berserk and he killed himself.
From the above it will be seen that Jason did not have at all a happy life. But that was largely his own fault for having failed to keep his eye on the ball, and letting Pelias make him tight in the first place. All things considered, too, I don't think he deserves to be looked on as one of the top Heroes. He wouldn't have got anywhere without Medea, would he?
Robbie felt that the ending to this chapter was still a little weak but, during his re-writing, he had improved it considerably; so, pleased with his day's work, he went happily to bed.
First thing on Thursday morning, he ran downstairs to collect his post and hurried back to his room with it. It consisted entirely of replies to his advertisement, and there was a great stack of them; many more than he had expected.