“Quite true, my dear,” he answered, “but isn’t a fairy-tale worth paying for?—­worth a little trouble?  And remember, if you will allow me, two things about fairy-tales:  there must always be some evil fairy in them, some dragon or such like; and there is always—­a happy ending.  Now the dragon enters at last—­in the form of Tobias; and we should be happy on that very account.  It shows that the race of dragons is not, as I feared, extinct.  And as for the happy ending, we will arrange it, after lunch—­for which, by the way, you are somewhat late.”

After lunch, the “King” resumed, but in a brief and entirely practical vein: 

“We are about to be besieged,” he said.  “The woods, probably, are already thick with spies.  For the moment, we must suspend operations on our Golconda”—­his name for the ruins that we were to excavate—­“and, as our present purpose—­yours no less than ours, friend Ulysses—­is to confuse Tobias, my suggestion is this:  That you walk with me a mile or two to the nor’ard.  There is an entertaining mangrove swamp I should like to show you, and also, you can give me your opinion of an idea of mine that you will understand all the better when I have taken you over the ground.”

So we walked beyond the pines, down onto a long interminable flat land of marl marshes and mangrove trees—­so like that in which Charlie Webster had shot the snake and the wild duck—­that only Charlie could have seen any difference.

“Now,” said the “King,” “do you see a sort of river there, overgrown with mangroves and palmettos?”

“Yes,” I answered, “almost—­though it’s so choked up it’s almost impossible to say.”

“Well,” said the “King,” “that’s the idea; you haven’t forgotten those old ruins we are going to explore.  You remember how choked up they are.  Well, this was the covered water-way, the secret creek, by which the pirates—­John Teach, or whoever it was, perhaps John P. Tobias himself—­used to land their loot.  It’s so overgrown nowadays that no one can find the entrance but myself and a friend or two; do you understand?”

We walked a little farther, and then at length came to the bank of the creek the “King” had indicated.  This we followed for half a mile or so, till we met the fresh murmur of the sea.

“We needn’t go any farther,” said the “King.”  “It’s the same all the way along to the mouth—­all over-grown as you see, all the way, right out to the ‘white water’ as they call it—­which is four miles of shoal sand that is seldom deeper than two fathoms, and which a nor’easter is liable to blow dry for a week on end.  Naturally it’s a hard place to find, and a hard place to get off!—­and only two or three persons besides Sweeney—­all of them our friends—­know the way in.  Tobias may know of it; but to know it is one thing, to find it is another matter.  I could hardly be sure of it myself—­if I were standing in from the sea, with nothing but the long palmetto-fringed coast-line to go by.