Libya and all the deserts of Africa were then first drained of their moisture and left in great tracts of parching sandy waste. The great rivers, the Ganges, Euphrates, and the Danube, rose up in clouds of hissing steam, and the frightened Nile ran off and hid his head in the sands, and there for centuries and centuries it has lain hid.
Stern Neptune, in amazement and anger, thrice reared his head above the shrinking waves where his fishes all were dying, and thrice the fierce flames drove him back.
At length Earth, wrapped in her scalding seas, uplifting her scorching brows, appealed to Jupiter.
"See how fierce vapors choke my breath; see my singed hair, my withered face, the heaps of cinders that defile my fair body.... Have pity."
Jupiter heard her prayer. He mounted his high ethereal throne, called all powers, even the god whose son drove the chariot, to witness that what he did he was compelled to do, and launched a thunderbolt at the head of the despairing Phaeton.
Thus with fire the god of gods suppressed the raging fire. Lifeless from the chariot the boy fell like a falling star, and his charred body dropped to the earth far from his own land, far in the western world, beside the river Po.
The horses broke loose from their harness, the chariot was splintered into a thousand shining fragments and scattered far over the steaming earth.
And the story goes, that for the space of one whole day, from morn till eve, the world existed without a sun, lighted only by the lurid glare of the burning ruins.
Beside the waters of the river the Latian nymphs came round and gazed with awe upon the dead youth. His charred body they inclosed in a marble urn and wrote on it an epitaph:
"Here lies a youth as beautiful as brave,
Who through the heavens his father's chariot drave."
His mother Clymené, frantic with grief, ceased not to roam the world, followed by her weeping daughters, until at last she came to the banks of Po, and found there the sculptured urn. She hung above it, bedewing the marble with her tears, crying aloud the name so dear to her. Her daughters stood around, weeping and lamenting with her. All night long they kept their watch, and returning day found them still calling on their brother's name. Four days and nights they kept their stand, till at length, when for their weariness they would have sought rest, they found they could not move. Phaethusa's arms were covered with hardening bark and branching boughs; Lampetia stood rooted to the ground; Æglé, as she tore her hair, only filled her hands with leaves. While their faces were yet untransformed, they cried to their mother for help. But, alas! she was powerless. She tore the bark from their fair bodies, she stripped the leaves from their sprouting fingers, she clung to their hardening limbs in vain. Only blood came trickling where she tore away the leaves and bark, and in faint voices the maidens cried that she only wounded her daughters when she tore their trees.
Then the bark covered their fair faces, and they stood for ever dumb, waving green boughs in the sun, while tears of amber rolled slowly down the encrusting bark.
ARETHUSA
BY V. C. TURNBULL
Lord of all waters was Oceanus, the ancient Titan god, whose beard, like a foaming cataract, swept to his girdle. Many fair daughters had he, of whom poets sing, yet the fairest of all was the nymph Arethusa. She had not lacked for wooers, but she shunned the haunts of men and abode on the Acroceraunian heights whence she had sprung, or when she descended to the plain hid herself in tangled bushes and overhanging alders. She loved the quiet woodland ways, and had vowed herself to the chaste huntress Diana, and in her train loved to fleet through the woods and over the plains of Achaia, chasing the flying deer.
Now it happened one day that Arethusa, wearied with hunting and with the great heat, wandered alone among the woods and meadows, seeking a place of rest. Presently she heard the ripple of waters, and soon she came to a river flowing between straight poplars and hoary willows. Swiftly and quietly it ran, making no eddies, and so pure were its waters that she could count the pebbles lying in its deep bed like jewels in an open casket.
Joyfully then the tired maiden unbound her sandals, and, sitting down upon the bank, dipped her white feet in the cool water. For a while she sat there undisturbed, and idly watched the growing ripples as she dabbled in the stream. But while she thus rested and played, a strange commotion drew her eyes to the middle of the stream, and a fear fell upon her, for she knew that it could be none other than Alpheus, the god of that river. Quickly she sprang to her feet, and while yet she stood trembling and irresolute, a hollow voice cried to her from mid-stream. And (oh marvel!) the voice was not terrible like that of a god, but tender and full of pleading love.
"Whither dost thou hasten, Arethusa?" it said. And again: "Whither dost thou hasten?"
But Arethusa, a maiden who cared nothing for love, would be wooed by neither god nor man.
Swiftly she fled from the enchanted spot, even before the young river-god had sprung from the stream with love and longing in his eyes. And now began that long chase of which the end was even stranger than the beginning. Arethusa, weary no longer, darted like a fawn from the river, and Alpheus, more ardent still as the maid was coy, swiftly followed her flying steps. Through woods and meadows, over hills and across valleys—yes, and past more than one city, fled pursuer and pursued. But now, as the day drew towards sunsetting, Arethusa's strong limbs wearied, her strength flagged, and her pace slackened, and in her sick heart she knew how vain a thing it is for a mortal to strive against a god. For no weariness weighed down the feet of Alpheus; straight and swift he ran as his own river. Now so near was he to the maiden that his long shadow fell across her feet; but no faster could she go, for the sun smote fiercely upon her, and her strength was failing. Louder and louder sounded the footsteps of the god. Now she could feel his hard breathing in her long hair; was there no escape? With her last strength she cried to her sovereign mistress: "Help, O Huntress, thy huntress maiden! Aid her who so often carried thy bow and thine arrows in the chase!"
And the goddess answered her votary.
For at once Arethusa was wrapped in a dense cloud, so dense indeed that even the burning eyes of her pursuer could not pierce it. There, then, she crouched, like a hare on its form, while outside she heard the footsteps of Alpheus pacing round her hiding-place, searching and baffled. But he, having come so near his prize, would not now give it up, and she knew that he would watch the cloud till she came forth. At the thought, beads of sweat gathered on her forehead and ran down to her feet. Faster and faster it poured; she was as ice that melts in the sun; and she realized with joy that the goddess was opening for her another way of escape. All her weariness and terror slid from her straightway; her tired limbs melted into a liquid ease, and it was no maiden but a laughing stream that shot from under the cloud and fled singing towards the western sea.
But Alpheus, noting the guile of the goddess, laughed aloud, for could he not at will become even as his own river? He changed even as he conceived the thought; and now the chase began once more, only this time river pursued stream, leaping from crag to crag, and rushing across wide wastes of marshy country.
And again Arethusa, finding herself in straits, cried aloud to her sovereign mistress Diana. And, behold, in answer to her prayer, the earth was suddenly rent asunder and a vast black chasm yawned in her path. Into it she plunged, and down, down, down she fell. And into it in pursuit plunged also Alpheus, who loved her so well that he was ready to follow her to the depths of the earth.
The darkness passed, and overhead was a beautiful green light, and on all sides a profound and solemn silence. Arethusa had left the land behind, and was pushing across the floor of the ocean. And behind her came the waters of Alpheus. Then into the maiden heart, which as yet had known not love, came something better than fear. From the lover who could follow her even hither why should she fly? On he came, undeterred and unpolluted by the brackish sea, his waters as fresh and pure as when they had first run laughing through the sunlit meadows of Arcadia.... Arethusa sought no