“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 Alcinoues; 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.

CHAPTER VII

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 Alcinoues 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.

If I had found it difficult going at high noon, he continued, with an immense sunlight overhead, how was I going to find it with the sun gone head-long into the sea, as was about to happen in a few moments.  When the light that is in thee has become darkness, how great is that darkness! Si ergo lumen quod in te est tenebrae sunt, ipsae tenebrae quantae erunt! And he settled it, as he settled everything, with a whimsical quotation.

He had not yet, he said, shown me that haunt of the wild bees, where the golden honey now took the place of that treasure of golden money; and there were also other curiosities of the place he desired to show me.  And that led me—­his invitation being accepted without further parley—­to mention the idea I had conceived as I came along, of exploring those curious old ruined buildings.  Need I say that the mere suggestion was enough to set him aflame?  I might have known that here, of all men, was my man for such an enterprise.  He had meant to do it himself for how many years—­but age, with stealing step, et cetera.