He paused--for Calypso had involuntarily made a gesture, as though pleading to be spared the whole revelation--and then with a smile, continued:
"We determined to hide away our little hoard where it would be safe from our neighbours, and dispose of it according to our needs with a certain tradesman in the town whom we thought we could trust--a tradesman, who, by the way, quite naturally levies a little tax upon us for his security. No blame to him! I have lived far too long to be hard on human nature."
"John Sweeney?" I asked, looking over at Calypso, with eyes that dared at last to smile.
"The very same, my Lord Ulysses," answered my friend.
And so I came to understand that Mr. Sweeney's reluctance in selling me that doubloon was not so sinister as it had, at the moment, appeared; that it had in fact come of a loyalty which was already for me the most precious of all loyalties.
"Then," said I, "as a fitting conclusion to the confidence you have reposed in me, my Lord Alcinoüs; if Miss Calypso would have the kindness to let us have a sight of that chest of beaten copper of which you spoke, I would like to restore this, that was once a part of its contents, wherever the rest of them" (and I confess that I paused a moment) "may be in hiding."
And I took from my pocket the sacred doubloon that I had bought from John Sweeney--may Heaven have mercy upon his soul!--for sixteen dollars and seventy-five cents, on that immortal evening.
_In Which the "King" Dreams a Dream--and Tells Us About It._
The afternoon, under the spell of its various magic, had been passing all too swiftly, and at length I grew reluctantly aware that it was time for me to be returning once more to the solid, not to say squalid, earth; but, as I made a beginning of my farewell address, King Alcinoüs raised his hand with a gesture that could not be denied. It was not to be heard of, he said. I must be their guest till to-morrow, sans argument. To begin with, for all the golden light still in the garden, with that silver wand of the fountain laid upon the stillness like a charm, it was already night among the palms, he said, and blacker than our friend Erebus in the woods--and there was no moon.
"No moon?" I said, and, though the remark was meaningless, one might have thought, from Calypso's face--in which rose colour fought with a suggestion of submerged laughter--that it had a meaning.