In Clem's story one word had been spoken, the one word which, in all ages, has been as a raging fire in men's minds, which has sent scores to die on the scorching deserts of Africa and Australia, or on the borders of the Arctic Seas, which has bred fevered adventure, lawlessness, and murder wherever it has been spoken, the word:

Gold!

Many years had passed since Owens had felt this auriferous fever, many years since his heart had beat impetuously as in the wild days of the camps of his youth, but the word had rung again in his ears as of old. The subtle poison of the lure was in his veins once more. He could not sleep for thinking of the old prospector lying almost at the point of death in his own mine hospital, and, perhaps, dying with the secret of millions, untold.

He reasoned with himself for his foolishness. Over and over again he reminded himself that he was settled for life as a colliery-owner, and that coal mines bring far more wealth than gold mines have ever done. The spell was stronger than his reason. Night after night he sat late in his library, reading anew the lore of gold that he had once known so well, and dreaming avid visions over the pages.

The records of human daring do not reach so far back in the dawn of history as to show a time when gold was not a goal. In the earliest laws as yet known—the Laws of Menes in Egypt, B.C. 3000—both gold and silver were sought and used as standards of value in the royal and priestly treasuries. Breastplates and ornaments of gold were buried with the mummies of kings and nobles of Egypt and Mycenae.

There was gold in Chaldea and Armenia. The fable of Tantalus, who kept unlawful possession of a golden dog which had been stolen from Zeus, the great All-Father, was a legend of the gold placer deposits near Mt. Sipylus, north of Smyrna. The earliest records show a knowledge of gold in the Caucasus, Ural, and Himalaya Mts.

The Phoenicians, most adventurous of all the early races, went on long expeditions to distant lands in search of gold. Cadmus, the Phoenician, in B.C. 1594, sent miners to Thrace and established a regular gold-trade thence. As a curious forecast of what was to happen on the other side of the world, tens of centuries later, the ancient historian Strabo tells of a wagon-wheel uncovering a nugget of gold near Mt. Pangeus, not far from the present Bulgarian frontier.

One of the oldest of all the tales of high adventure was the Quest of the Golden Fleece, and the fifty heroes who set out on that quest in the oared ship Argo—and hence called the Argonauts—have given their name to gold-seekers for hundreds of generations. Few tales in all the world are so wonderful as the old Greek legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece, a quest of daring, of magic, and of peril.

The Golden Fleece, itself, was a thing of mystery. Its origin harks back to the earliest days of the Age of Fable. Thus, in its briefest form, runs the tale:

In a minor kingdom of what is now Northern Greece, there lived a king, Athamas, son of the god of the sea, who had married Nephele, the goddess of the clouds. But Athamas proved faithless and fell in love with Ino, grand-daughter of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. The cloud-goddess, indignant at this neglect, disappeared, leaving behind her two children, Phrixus and Helle.

It was not long before the stepmother conceived a violent hatred for the children of the first wife. Counting on the spell of her beauty, she tried to persuade Athamas to get rid of them, but the king refused. Then Ino fell to base plotting. She brought about a famine in the land by secretly heating the grains of wheat before they were sown and thus preventing their growth; then, by a false oracle, she persuaded the king that the gods were angry and would only be appeased if he offered his eldest-born, Phrixus, as a sacrifice. For the sake of his country, the king agreed.

All was in readiness, Phrixus was on the altar, the officiating priest had the knife raised, when masses of cloud and fog rolled over the scene and Nephele appeared, leading a ram with a fleece all threads of gold. So thick was the fog, that, in an instant, it blotted out all vision; the priest's hand stayed uplifted, for he could no longer see his victim to deal the fatal blow. Then came a rift in the fog, and, through the swirl of mist, Athamas and Ino saw Phrixus and his sister leap upon the back of the gold-fleeced ram.

Down the mountain and across the plain the great ram sped, and plunged into the waters of the strait that lies between Europe and Asia Minor, breasting the waves with ease. Helle fell from the back of the ram and was drowned, so that the strait (now known as the Dardanelles) was known to the Greeks as the Hellespont.

Phrixus reached the other side in safety. Following the counsel of his cloud-mother, he sacrificed the ram to the honor of the gods and took the fleece to Æetes, king of Colchis. Æetes at first received him with honor, but later proved false to his promises of friendship and made Phrixus a prisoner. The Golden Fleece was hung up on a tree in the grove of Ares (god of battle and grandfather of Ino), and there the mystic treasure was guarded by a dragon which never slept.

Now Pelias, brother of Athamas, had usurped the throne of Thessaly. When Jason, son of the true king, Aeson, had grown to man's estate, he presented himself before Pelias and challenged him to surrender the kingdom.

The wily Pelias, knowing well that the people of Thessaly would side with Jason, did not refuse outright. He demanded, only, that Jason should show his rightfulness to be deemed a king's son by some act of heroic bravery. Such a test was not unusual in the Days of Fable, and Jason agreed.

"This will I do," said Jason, "name the deed!"

Cunningly the king answered,

"Bring me the Golden Fleece!"

Jason, high-hearted, set out on the quest. Since he must cross the sea, there must be built a ship. Through the advice of the cloud-goddess, his mother, he appealed for help to Athene, goddess of wisdom, and a bitter enemy of Ares and his grand-daughter Ino. The fifty-oared ship Argo was built, and Athene herself placed in the prow a piece of oak endowed with the power of speaking oracles.

The Quest of the Golden Fleece was a deed worthy of heroes, and none but heroes were members of the crew. Such men—demigods, most of them—had never been gathered in a crew before. Orpheus, of the charmed lyre; Zetes and CalaÏs, sons of the North Wind; Castor and Pollux, the divine Twins; Meleager, the hunter of the magic boar; Theseus, the slayer of tyrants; the all-powerful Hercules, son of Zeus, whose twelve labors were famous in all antiquity; and others of little lesser fame, were numbered in that gallant company.

Many and strange were their adventures in the Argo, of which there is not space to tell. The tale is one of ever-increasing wonder: the battle with the Harpies, evil birds with human heads; the peril of the Sirens, whose deadly singing was drowned by Orpheus' song; the menace of the Symplegades, or moving rocks, which clashed together when a ship passed between; the fight with the Stymphalian birds, who used their feathers of brass as arrows; and many more. The story of the voyage of the Argo is a story that will never die.

Despite their wanderings and their adventures, the Quest of the Golden Fleece remained the goal of the Argonauts. After months—or it may have been years—Jason and the heroes reached the land they sought. There they presented themselves before Æetes and demanded the Golden Fleece.

The king of Colchis looked at these heroes and trembled. Well he knew that neither he nor his people were a match for such as they. He took refuge in stratagem, and, as Pelias had done, demanded from Jason the performance of feats he deemed impossible. He must yoke and tame the bulls of HephÆstus, god of fire, which snorted flame and had hoofs of red-hot brass; with these he must plow the field of Ares, god of battle; that done, he must sow the field with dragon's teeth, from which a host of armed men would spring, and he must defeat that army.

Truly, the task was one to tax a hero. But, as the gods would have it, Jason found a new but dangerous ally. This was Medea, the witch-daughter of Æetes, grand-daughter of Helios, god of the sun. She loved her father but little, for her father had imprisoned her for sorcery and, though she had escaped by means of her black arts, her dark heart brooded vengeance. Partly from love of Jason and partly from hatred of Æetes, she leagued herself with the heroes.

Jason was not proof against her wiles. Moreover, he realized that the task Æetes had set him was one almost beyond the doing. He accepted from the dark witch-maiden a magic draught which made him proof against fire and sword. Thus, scorning alike the fiery breath of the bulls and the myriad blades of the tiny swordsmen, he plowed the field of Ares and sowed it with the dragon's teeth. Then he threw a charm among the ranks of the dwarf warriors who sprang up from the soil, which caused them to fight, one against the other, until all were slain. Thus he reached the wood where hung the Golden Fleece.

There remained still to be conquered the dragon that never slept. Again the sorceress Medea came to the hero's help. By wild witch songs she charmed the monster to harmlessness, and, stepping across the snaky coils, Jason snatched from a bough the Golden Fleece, won at last!

Though the Argonauts feared Medea, and though Jason dreaded her fully as much as he was lured by her, the heroes could not deny that their quest had been successful mainly through her aid. For her reward, Medea demanded that they take her back to Greece in the Argo, and she took her young brother Absyrtus, with her. The oracle of oak in the bow prophesied disaster, but the heroes had pledged their words and could not retract.

The Argo had not gone far upon the sea before the heroes saw that Æetes was pursuing them. Here was a peril, truly, for Ares, god of battle, was on the pursuer's side. Then Medea seized her young brother, cut his body into pieces and scattered them on the sea. The anguished father stopped to collect the fragments and to return them to the shore for honorable burial. By this shameful device, the Argonauts escaped.

So hideous a crime demanded a dreadful expiation, but Jason was to draw the doom more directly upon his own head. Though he had shuddered at the murder of Absyrtus and he knew the witch-maid's hands were red with blood, the spell of Medea's dark beauty overswept his loathing. At the first land where the Argo stopped, he married her.

At this the gods were little pleased. They sent a great darkness and terrible storms which drove the Argonauts over an unknown sea to lands of new and fearful perils. Once they were all but swallowed in a quicksand, again, menaced by shipwreck, a third time, a giant whose body was of brass threatened them with a hideous death from which they were saved only by the twins, Castor and Pollux. The homeward journey of the Argo was not less wild and difficult than her coming.

Yet, at the last, Jason brought back the Golden Fleece to Thessaly, only to find that the false Pelias had slain Aeson and Jason's mother and brother during the absence of the Argonauts. His crime was not left unpunished. Medea persuaded the daughters of Pelias to cut their father into small pieces and to boil the fragments in a pot with certain witch-herbs that she gave them, falsely promising that by this means the old king would regain his youth. Of the later life of Jason and Medea, there is no need to speak. Misery was their lot, and their deaths were not long delayed.

Thus, in fanciful guise, appears in the old Greek legend the record of the European discovery of the alluvial gold deposits of Colchis, and to the Argonauts was ascribed the honor of being the first to bring to Greece the gold of Asia Minor. Even in those early days, the gift of gold was regarded as the favor of the gods.

[2] One book that should be in every boy's library is Charles Kingsley's "The Heroes," in which the "Quest of the Golden Fleece" is related with a beauty unequaled in the English language. The books of A.J. Church, also, especially his "Stories from Homer," make the old Greek demigods live once again.