"Do you really think he saw the—doubloon—like that other 'person'?" I asked.
"There's no doubt of it."
"Well, then," I said, "let's hurry home, and talk it over with the 'King.'"
The "King," as I had realised, was a practical "romantic" and at once took the matter seriously, leaving—as might have surprised some of those who had only heard him talk—his conversational fantasies on the theme to come later.
Calypso, however, had the first word.
"I always told you, Dad," she said;—and the word "Dad" on the lips of that big statuesque girl—who always seemed ready to take that inspired framework of rags and bones and talking music into her protecting arms—seemed the quaintest of paradoxes—, "I always told you, Dad, what would happen, with your fairy-tales of the doubloons."
"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.