Page:The book of wonder voyages (1919).djvu/112

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The Book of Wonder Voyages

touch. And the Centaurs smelt the wine, and flocked to it, and fought for it with Hercules; but he killed them all with his poisoned arrows, and Chiron was left alone. Then Chiron took up one of the arrows, and dropped it by chance upon his foot; and the poison ran like fire along his veins, and he lay down and longed to die; and cried, "Through wine I perish, the bane of all my race. Why should I live for ever in this agony? Who will take my immortality, that I may die?"

Then Prometheus answered, the good Titan, whom Hercules had set free from Caucasus, "I will take your immortality and live forever, that I may help poor mortal men." So Chiron gave him his immortality, and died, and had rest from pain. And Hercules and Prometheus wept over him, and went to bury him on Pelion; but Zeus took him up among the stars, to live forever, grand and mild, low down in the far southern sky.