Dennis Wheatley - Mayhem in Greece

Athene, now scared that one of her prot£g6s might be done in by her own handiwork, came hurrying down to Perseus to warn nim to be jolly careful how he tackled this terrible foe. She told him that he would be as dead as a fried haddock if he even met Medusa's glance, and lent him her own shield which was so brightly polished that it could be used as a mirror and he would be able to see his enemy in it while his back was turned to her. Then some of the other gods rallied round. Hermes gave him his crooked sword that could cut through the thickest armour, and tied on his feet his own winged sandals that would enable him to fly over land and sea. Pluto sent him from the Underworld a magic helmet that made its wearer invisible' and, finally, Athene provided him witl\ a goat-skin bag in which to put Medusa's head when he had cut it off, because even in death it could instantly strike dead anyone who saw it.

It's a funny thing, but after providing Perseus with all this lease-lend help his immortal friends could not tell him where to find Medusa. They could only suggest that he should go and wring the information out of the Graeae, three half-sisters of the Gorgons who lived in the far-distant frozen north.

Having asked Athene to keep a protecting eye on his Mama, Perseus set off without further delay. Hermes' sandals enabled him to fly like a jet-bomber to his destination and Pluto's helmet made him invisible. He came down in a region of eternal snows and icy mountains on the shores of the Hyperborean Sea.

There, crouching in a huddle, which is hardly to be wondered at seeing how cold it must have been, he found the three Grey Sisters. Their long white hair was frozen stiff with icicles and they were so old that they must have been pretty well past everything. I mean, when three people are reduced, as they were, to sharing one eye and one tooth between them, they can't be fit for much, can they?

Wearing the helmet that made him invisible, Perseus came creeping up on those poor old girls, while they were bickering over who should have the eye to see the person whose footsteps they could hear crackling the icy ground, he snatched it from them.

At that, one gathers, their language became unprintable, but Perseus just danced around them making rude noises and told them that unless they told him were the Gorgons lived he'd take their tooth as well, then they wouldn't be able to munch whatever it was they did munch to keep the life in their skinny old bodies. Seeing that it was all up they came clean and gave him the address he wanted.

Having given them back their eye, he was off like a thermonuclear rocket out of the icy mists, heading south into the brilliant sunshine.

The gentle reader will appreciate that it is not exactly easy to figure out where places mentioned by the ancients are on the maps in use today, so I must be forgiven for not being able to tell you where the island was in which the Gorgons lived. But it was definitely in the tropics and as far as I can make out off the coast of Africa.

When Perseus arrived above it the three sisters were lying asleep in the middle of what must have looked like a cemetery, for all over the place there were statues of people and animals; though really, of course, they had once been alive and Medusa's glance had turned them to stone.

Medusa was lying between the other two and in one quick look Perseus saw that she was a most repulsive creature. Her great body was covered in horny scales, her hair was a mass of writhing serpents, she had wings of brass and her hands and feet were terrible claws. Anxious to get the job done before she should wake up he wasted no time but held Athene's mirror-shield above his head and focused her face in it. Whether he had practised such a tricky stroke before, history does not relate, but he struck backward over his shoulder with Hermes' crooked sword and in one mighty slash severed her head from her body. Then, fumbling behind him, he pushed the head into the goatskin bag that Athene had given him for this purpose. Cock-a-hoop at having pulled this fast one on her so easily he leapt skyward with a shout of triumph.

That was a silly thing to do, because it woke her horrible sisters. When they saw Medusa's headless corpse they nearly burst themselves with rage. Clashing their brass wings and screaming with fury they came hurtling after our hero. His goose would have been cooked in no time if he hadn't been able to clap on the helmet that Pluto had sent him, which made him invisible. That enabled him to give them the slip and turning north he sped over a vast desert that was probably the Sahara.

While he flew on, drops of Medusa's blood trickled out of the goatskin bag. As they fell on the sand below they turned into snakes and scorpions. That is why there are so many of these poisonous reptiles in Africa. However, he seems to have got a bit off his course, for instead of landing back in Greece he came down in Morocco.

By then he was pretty tired, and one can't wonder. Seeing old Atlas kneeling there supporting the world on his shoulders, and knowing that he owned the Garden of the Hesperides, Perseus asked if he might rest there for a while. But Atlas got the idea that he intended to pinch some of his golden apples, and refused him permission.

As the Greeks were very hot on observing the laws of hospitality towards strangers, Perseus decided to teach the giant a lesson. He uncovered Medusa's head, which still had the power to turn to stone anyone who looked at it, and showed it to Atlas. Before you could say 'Jack Robinson' the mighty giant had become a mountain. Personally I think that was a bit overdoing it, but that is what happened, and if you go to Morocco today you can see him with snow on his head and forests sprouting out of his chest and shoulders.

By then Perseus was either lost or thought he would like to fly round for a while before returning to his home on Seriphos. Anyway he shot off eastwards, crossed the Nile and sped down the Red Sea. The south-western coast was then part of Nubia, as the ancients called Abyssinia, and, glancing down, Perseus chanced to see a great black rock sticking up some way from the shore with a girl chained to it. Naturally he went down to investigate and he found her to be an eyeful. Seeing the country they were in one would h&ve expected her to be a coal-black negress, but not a bit of it. She was a lovely golden brown, and an absolute smasher, but tears were running from her lovely eyes and she was obviously needing to be rescued.

When he asked her how she came to be there she didn't answer, but shut her eyes and blushed crimson. The poor girl's trouble was that she had no clothes on and she felt too embarrassed to talk to a strange young man while naked. Being a well-brought-up chap, Perseus realized what was biting her and put his hat on, then asked his question again.

Now that he was invisible, the girl perked up. She said her name was Andromeda and that she was the only daughter of Cepheus, the King of those parts. Apparently her mother, Cas-siope, had been silly enough to boast that she, Andromeda, was more beautiful than Poseidon's daughters, the Nereids. They had been very peeved when they heard this and persuaded their father to send a terrible sea monster to ravage King Cepheus's coast and gobble up all his fisher folk.

Much upset by this, the King had gone off to Libya and consulted the Oracle of Ammon there as to how he could protect his people. The Oracle had told him that the monster could be got rid of only by sacrificing his daughter to it. One need hardly add that the King and Queen did not like this idea one little bit; but after a while their people had forced them to take this terrible course, so poor Andromeda had been chained to the rock and was waiting for the monster to come and eat her.

She had only just finished telling Perseus this when she let out a terrible shriek, for that very moment she had spotted the monster as it bobbed up from the depths some way behind him.