He took the girdle and he put it around his great
brows; then he thanked Hippolyte and he went from the tent. He
saw the Amazons standing on the rocks and the steep places with
bows bent; unchallenged he went on, and he came to his ship and
he sailed away from that country with one more labor
accomplished.
The labor that followed was not dangerous. He sailed over sea and
he came to Crete, to the land that King Minos ruled over. And
there he found, grazing in a special pasture, the bull that
Poseidon had given King Minos. He laid his hands upon the bull's
horns and he struggled with him and he overthrew him. Then he
drove the bull down to the seashore.
His next labor was to take away the herd of red cattle that was
owned by the monster Geryoneus. In the Island of Erytheia, in the
middle of the Stream of Ocean, lived the monster, his herd
guarded by the two-headed hound Orthus--that hound was the
brother of Cerberus, the threeheaded hound that kept guard in the
Underworld.
Mounted upon the bull given Minos by Poseidon, Heracles
fared across the sea. He came even to the straits that divide
Europe from Africa, and there he set up two pillars as a memorial
of his journey--the Pillars of Heracles that stand to this day.
He and the bull rested there. Beyond him stretched the Stream of
Ocean; the Island of Erytheia was there, but Heracles thought
that the bull would not be able to bear him so far.
And there the sun beat upon him, and drew all strength away from
him, and he was dazed and dazzled by the rays of the sun.
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