Closer and closer Orion approached, with never a word. Then with the same swift motion in which he was wont to pounce upon a trembling hare, he caught at his prize--and remained in this position, staring stupidly at seven white pigeons that fluttered away just out of his grasp and soared upward till they disappeared into the blue of the sky.
Zeus had listened to the prayer of Maia, and in his sovereign power he caught up all the seven into the firmament and translated them into stars, the shining Pleiades.
For the second time in his life Orion realized with dull resentment that there were unseen powers beyond his own. Like some wounded wolf he sought a couch in a cave, beneath a great overhanging rock in the nearby ravine, and lay there nursing his grievance.
When he finally came forth, the fair land of Hellas had become distasteful to him. He set forth to find some country beyond the seas where he might still be mightiest of all, and where naught could remind him of these rebuffs.
Wide were his wanderings across the mighty sea. Even to Scylla and Charybdis he came, and there left perpetual memorials of his might. For on the Sicilian coast, where fell Charybdis threatened every mariner, he built a sickle-shaped strip of protecting rock that formed the safe harbor of Zancle, where, thanks to this shelter, the great city of Messina was to rise. Also, across the strait from hideous, six-headed Scylla he hurled into the open sea a rocky mass that juts from the shore as the promontory of Pelorus--whereon he reared a temple to his protector Poseidon, in which the inhabitants religiously adored the sea-god for thousands of years thereafter. For a time he dwelt in the mountains of Hera, whence fiery Ætna could be seen to the north, rumbling and spouting forth flame as the colossal Enceladus still struggled beneath its weight.
But, he could not long be content in any one place; so when he had mastered all the difficulties of rugged Sicily, he set forth once more.
This time he fared eastward again till he came into the smiling waters of the Ægean, and reached the craggy isle of Chios, where fig tree, palm and vine grew under the soft Ionian sky.
King Œnopion ruled this land of ease and plenty, and his daughter Merope was famed through all Ionia for her beauty.