I would down to the Port-side and bathe in the morning waters. But ere I did that, remembering the dream or vision of the night, I went towards that place where I had seen the monk and carefully examined the same. But nothing there was to give me clue. The room was stoutly panelled with oak, every panel as like to his brother as two peas. Yet in that corner of the room there was one thing that made me linger, for the smell of earth, it seemed to me, was there stronger than elsewhere. I sniffed and smelt like a terrier after a mouse; but sniff and smell as I might found nothing. I was no stranger to sliding panels and the like, at least by hearsay, but press and push as I might nothing came of it, so that at last I was fain to desist. As I made my way to the water-side in the glorious morning my thoughts were full of the night’s encounter. If it had been no dream but a true happening I did not doubt now, with the sun risen, that the monk was no ghost but a living man, albeit a spare one, for I recalled his lean finger, and the burning eyes set in the hollow cheeks. His words had been verily human, not ghostly at all: and had I been minded to leave my great lord whom I loved, had he not been ready to bear me away with him? Either the thing was a fantasy of a dream, every part of it exceedingly sensible, and one part following another as I have not known it in dreams, or else it were true, and he a living man who had stood before me last night. One thought made my heart leap up with a sharp throb of pleasure. The monk had said I was noble—I, who had come from none knew where, a nameless youth and treated courteously only because I was dear to my lord, and myself very sharp in a quarrel and adroit in the practice of arms. After I had bathed and lain to dry in the sun I returned back hungry as a hawk. In the blessed sun all was different from last night. My lord would return, and would bear me away to court, and presently we should have letters of marque, and should go sailing on the Spanish Main in search of good fighting, salted with doubloons and pieces of eight; and presently should make for the Treasure Islands, and find there, as I imagined, jewels as large as plums, and gold and silver in great portions. For I had read Maundeville and other travellers, and had magnified in my credulity even the marvels they had told. I knew, too, that my lord had brought home to the Queen’s Majesty a necklace of pearls whereof each stone was larger than a cherry. And we had heard of Guiana that the very sands of the seashore sparkled with gold and silver, and that in the workings the old inhabitants thereof had made, that they might build their heathen temples, the walls were of gold, while the idols were crusted with jewels so that no man might look on them without winking.