The Story of Hercules by Bob Blaisdell

Author:Bob Blaisdell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486146836
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-10-23T04:00:00+00:00

7. The Birds and the Bull

I ARRIVED SEVERAL days later at Lake Stymphalos. The birds had made themselves a menace by flocking in enormous numbers, arranging themselves so densely on the edges of the lake that no men from the neighboring city could fish or could even protect themselves should the birds attack. These tall, leggy birds had long, sharp beaks that could stab a man through his chest and claws that could pierce his limbs. Even with a bow and arrows there were too many thousands for me to kill. While I was surveying this strange scene from a hilltop, good, wise Athene, disguised as a boy, fishing pole over his shoulder, a cap on his head, came and sat down at my left, and said, “My father says thunder, though it causes no harm, is the most frightful weapon of all.”

“The most frightful weapon?” I said, wondering what riddle the boy was posing to me.

He handed me a pair of bronze castanets. And then I understood! “Thank you, lad,” I said, offering him my hand. “So handsome are you, so gleaming are your eyes I feel you must be a divine god or goddess.”

The boy turned his head away, smiling, and then in the form of an owl flew off toward the heavens. Owlish Athene!

I hiked down the hilltop, pulled my shield close over me to prevent the birds’ sharp beaks from piercing me, and then waded into the shallows of the lake. Like a dancer at a feast, I clicked those castanets. What a clanging din I raised! A stony silence, however, followed the first few thunderous knocks—a moment later, as I again clicked the castanets in rhythm, the birds screeched in fright and flapped their wings hastily and flew in droves up and away. So many were there that they shut out the sunlight for several minutes. I roared with laughter all the while, but kept up the terrible brass din until they were all gone.

I prayed thankfulness to Athene and then returned to Tiryns.

“What cannot you do?” wondered Eurystheus. For once he seemed not my enemy but almost my admirer, marvelling at my strength and cleverness.

“I do not know,” I replied, “since I have never failed.”

“I’ll see what I can do about that,” he said. He thought for several minutes and then said, “Perhaps your saving grace is that these previous labors have kept you in the friendly confines of the Peloponnesian peninsula. Go and bring me the savage Cretan bull alive. You might already know, Hercules, that his monstrous offspring, the Minotaur, half-bull, half-human, ate up all who visited its pen within the winding, confusing labyrinth.”

“You shall have the Cretan bull to do with as you will,” I answered. I fetched dear Iolaos, who was now a hearty young man, and with him sailed across the sea to the vast island of Crete.

This bull had mated with Pasiphae, wife of King Minos, producing the Minotaur, a creature more stubborn than any bull and more fiercesome than any man.

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