I saw that he must count upon huge indemnity.  We all dream indemnity.  But still I thought and think that there was here a weakness in him.  Far inward he may have known it himself, the outer self was so busy finding grounds!  After a moment he spoke again, “Little things bring little reward.  But to keep proportion and harmony, great thing must bring great things!  You do not know what it is to cross where no man hath crossed and to find what no man hath found!”

“Yes, it is a great thing!”

“Then,” said he, “what is it, that which I ask, to the grandeur of time!”

He spoke with a lifted face, eyes upon the mountain crests and the blue they touched.  They were nearer us than they had been; the Pass of Elvira was at hand.  Yet on I walked, and before me still hung the far ocean west of Palos.  I said, “I know something of the guesses, the chances and the dangers, but I have not spent there years of study—­”

He kindled, having an auditor whom he chose to think intelligent.  He checked his horse, that fell to grazing the bit of green by the way.  “As though,” he said, “I stood in Cipango beneath a golden roof, I know that it can be done!  Twelve hundred leagues at the most.  Look!” he said.  “You are not an ignoramus like some I have met; nor if I read you right are you like others who not knowing that True Religion is True Wonder up with hands and cry, `Blasphemy, Sacrilege and Contradiction!’ Earth and water make an orb.  Place ant on apple and see that orbs may be gone around!  Travel far enough and east and west change names!  Straight through, beneath us, are other men.”

“Feet against feet.  Antipodes,” I said.  “All the life of man is taking Wonder in and making Her at home!”

“So!” he answered.  “Now look!  The largeness of our globe is at the equator.  The great Ptolemy worked out our reckoning.  Twenty-four hours, fifteen degrees to each, in all three hundred and sixty degrees.  It is held that the Greeks and the Romans knew fifteen of these hours.  They stretched their hand from Gibraltar and Tangier, calling them Pillars of Hercules, to mid-India.  Now in our time we have the Canaries and the King of Portugal’s new islands —­another hour, mark you!  Sixteen from twenty-four leaves eight hours empty.  How much of that is water and how much is earth?  Where ends Ocean-Sea and where begins India and Cathay, of which the ancients knew only a part?  The Arabian Alfraganus thinks that Ptolemy’s degrees should be less in size.  If that be right, then the earth is smaller than is thought, and India nearer!  I myself incline to hold with Alfraganus.  It may be that less than two months’ sailing, calm and wind, would bring us to Cipango.  Give me the ships and I will do it!”

“You might have had them yesterday.”

To a marked extent he could bring out and make visible his inner exaltation.  Now, tall, strong, white-haired, he looked a figure of an older world.  “The spheres and all are set to harmony!” he said.  “I would have fitness.  Great things throughout!  Diamonds and rubies without flaw in the crown.—­We will talk no more about abating just demand!”