Dawn was spreading over the earth when they reached the throng of heroes; and the youths marvelled to behold the mighty fleece, which gleamed like the lightning of Zeus.  And each one started up eager to touch it and clasp it in his hands.  But the son of Aeson restrained them all, and threw over it a mantle newly-woven; and he led the maiden to the stern and seated her there, and spake to them all as follows: 

“No longer now, my friends, forbear to return to your fatherland.  For now the task for which we dared this grievous voyage, toiling with bitter sorrow of heart, has been lightly fulfilled by the maiden’s counsels.  Her—­for such is her will—­I will bring home to be my wedded wife; do ye preserve her, the glorious saviour of all Achaea and of yourselves.  For of a surety, I ween, will Aeetes come with his host to bar our passage from the river into the sea.  But do some of you toil at the oars in turn, sitting man by man; and half of you raise your shields of oxhide, a ready defence against the darts of the enemy, and guard our return.  And now in our hands we hold the fate of our children and dear country and of our aged parents; and on our venture all Hellas depends, to reap either the shame of failure or great renown.”

Thus he spake, and donned his armour of war; and they cried aloud, wondrously eager.  And he drew his sword from the sheath and cut the hawsers at the stern.  And near the maiden he took his stand ready armed by the steersman Ancaeus, and with their rowing the ship sped on as they strained desperately to drive her clear of the river.

By this time Medea’s love and deeds had become known to haughty Aeetes and to all the Colchians.  And they thronged to the assembly in arms; and countless as the waves of the stormy sea when they rise crested by the wind, or as the leaves that fall to the ground from the wood with its myriad branches in the month when the leaves fall—­who could reckon their tale?—­so they in countless number poured along the banks of the river shouting in frenzy; and in his shapely chariot Aeetes shone forth above all with his steeds, the gift of Helios, swift as the blasts of the wind.  In his left hand he raised his curved shield, and in his right a huge pine-torch, and near him in front stood up his mighty spear.  And Apsyrtus held in his hands the reins of the steeds.  But already the ship was cleaving the sea before her, urged on by stalwart oarsmen, and the stream of the mighty river rushing down.  But the king in grievous anguish lifted his hands and called on Helios and Zeus to bear witness to their evil deeds; and terrible threats he uttered against all his people, that unless they should with their own hands seize the maiden, either on the land or still finding the ship on the swell of the open sea, and bring her back, that so he might satisfy his eager soul with vengeance for all those deeds, at the cost of their own lives they should learn and abide all his rage and revenge.