Under cover of the darkness, she led Jason to the forest-precinct where the Fleece was hidden; and by her charms she lulled the sleepless dragon that guarded it. She even betrayed to him her brother Absyrtus, driven by the danger of a horrible death for herself, her lover and his comrades; and then, claiming from Jason a solemn oath of marriage when they should come to Hellas, she sailed with him on the _Argo_. Aeêtes pursued them in fierce wrath; and the gods, offended for the murder of Absyrtus, vexed them with storms. But at length they came to the island of Circe; and she, for the sake of her kinship with Medea, purified them of the murder of Absyrtus and set them on their way again. At Phæacia, where they were driven for harbourage, Aeêtes overtook them, threatening war with King Alcinous if he did not yield up his fugitive daughter. It was then that the great wise queen Arete pleaded for Medea in gentle charity: “_In madness she sinned at the first, when she gave him the charm that should tame The bulls; and with wrong to amend that wrong,—Ay, oftimes the same In our sinning we do!—she straightway essayed; and shrinking in fear From her proud sire’s tyrannous wrath, she fled. Now the man, as I hear, This Jason, is hound by mighty oaths which his own lips said, When he pledged him to make her, his halls within, his wife true-wed._“[30] Alcinous yielded to his wife’s entreaties on one condition—that Jason and Medea should be married forthwith; for then he could return answer to Aeêtes that he would not separate husband and wife. Thus the two were hurriedly wedded; and sailed in safety from Phæacia, to encounter many a terrible adventure before they reached Iolchos at last, triumphing in the possession of the Fleece. They gained great glory from their enterprise, but little else. For Pelias would not yield the throne to Jason; and it seemed to Medea that all she had wrought had been in vain. She brooded over Jason’s wrongs, chafing at the restraint imposed on her in her new life, and eager to strike for the kingship on his behalf. At last she evolved a plan by which she thought Pelias might be removed from their path, and the throne secured for Jason. Promising the old king renewed youth by means of her enchantments, she induced him to submit to death at the hands of his daughters. Then, in the storm of indignation which arose against her, she and Jason and their two young children fled to Corinth.