And seven days he walked through it on a path which few can tell, till he came to the edge of the everlasting night, where the air was full of feathers, and the soil was hard with ice; and there at last he found the three Grey Sisters, by the shore of the freezing sea, nodding upon a white log of driftwood, beneath the cold white winter moon; and they chanted a low song together, “Why the old times were better than the new.”

There was no living thing around them, not a fly, not a moss upon the rocks.  Neither seal nor sea gull dare come near, lest the ice should clutch them in its claws.  The surge broke up in foam, but it fell again in flakes of snow; and it frosted the hair of the three Grey Sisters, and the bones in the ice cliff above their heads.  They passed the eye from one to the other, but for all that they could not see; and they passed the tooth from one to the other, but for all that they could not eat; and they sat in the full glare of the moon, but they were none the warmer for her beams.  And Perseus pitied the three Grey Sisters; but they did not pity themselves.

So he said, “Oh, venerable mothers, wisdom is the daughter of old age.  You therefore should know many things.  Tell me, if you can, the path to the Gorgon.”

Then one cried, “Who is this who reproaches us with old age?” And another, “This is the voice of one of the children of men.”

Then one cried, “Give me the eye, that I may see him”; and another, “Give me the tooth, that I may bite him.”  But Perseus, when he saw that they were foolish and proud, and did not love the children of men, left off pitying them.  Then he stepped close to them, and watched till they passed the eye from hand to hand.  And as they groped about between themselves, he held out his own hand gently, till one of them put the eye into it, fancying that it was the hand of her sister.  Then he sprang back, and laughed, and cried: 

“Cruel and proud old women, I have your eye; and I will throw it into the sea, unless you tell me the path to the Gorgon, and swear to me that you tell me right.”

Then they wept, and chattered, and scolded; but in vain.  They were forced to tell the truth, though, when they told it, Perseus could hardly make out the road.

“You must go,” they said, “foolish boy, to the southward, into the ugly glare of the sun, till you come to Atlas the Giant, who holds the heaven and the earth apart.  And you must ask his daughters, the Hesperides, who are young and foolish like yourself.  And now give us back our eye, for we have forgotten all the rest.”

So Perseus gave them back their eye.  And he leaped away to the southward, leaving the snow and the ice behind.  And the terns and the sea gulls swept laughing round his head, and called to him to stop and play, and the dolphins gambolled up as he passed, and offered to carry him on their back.  And all night long the sea nymphs sang sweetly.  Day by day the sun rose higher and leaped more swiftly into the sea at night, and more swiftly out of the sea at dawn; while Perseus skimmed over the billows like a sea gull, and his feet were never wetted; and leapt on from wave to wave, and his limbs were never weary, till he saw far away a mighty mountain, all rose-red in the setting sun.  Perseus knew that it was Atlas, who holds the heavens and the earth apart.