I think one would die soon and easily underground, as creatures in a vacuum, for the will to live has so little to nourish itself on.  One’s whole nature falls into a catalepsy; all one’s faculties seem asleep, save the animal impulse to escape—­an impulse that would soon grow weary too.  So, it seemed to me, as I saw a little light and drew the breath of the living world once more, that even my love for Calypso had, so to say, been in a state of suspended animation during an entombment which was heavy with the poppy of the grave, and made me understand why the dead forget us so soon.

But now, as I stood on the little rocky platform outside the door through which I had burned my way, and looked down into the glimmering chasm beneath, and heard the fresh voice of the sea huskily rumbling and reverberating about hidden grottoes and channels, all that Calypso was to me came back with the keenness of a sword through my heart.  Ah! there was my treasure—­as I had known when my eyes first beheld her—­compared with which that gold and silver in there, whose gleam had made me momentarily distraught, was but so much dust and ashes.  Ardently as I had sought it, what was it compared to one glance of her eyes?  What if, in the same hour, I had lost my true treasure, and found the false?  At the thought, that glittering heap became abhorrent to me, and, without looking back, I sought for some way by which I could descend.

As my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I saw that there were some shallow steps cut diagonally in the rock, and down these I had soon made my way, to find myself in a roomy corridor, so much like that in which I had seen Calypso standing in the moonlight, that, for a moment, I dreamed it was the same, and started to run down it, thinking, indeed, that my troubles were over—­that in another moment I would emerge through that enchanted door and face the sea.  The more so, as the sand was wet under my feet, showing that the tide had but recently left it.

But alas! instead of a broad shining doorway, and open arms of freedom widespread for me to leap into, I came at last to a mere long narrow slit—­through which I could gaze as a man gazes through a prison window at the sky.

The entrance had once been wide and free, but a mass of rock had fallen from above and blocked it up, leaving only a long crack through which the tides passed to and fro.

I was still in my trap; it seemed more terrible than ever, now that I could see freedom so close and shining, her very robe rustling within a few feet of me, her very voice calling to me, singing the morning song of the sea.  But in the caverns behind me, I heard another mocking song, and I felt a cold breath on my cheek, for Death stood by my side a-grin.

“The treasure!” he whispered, “I need you to guard that.  The treasure you have risked all to win—­the treasure for which you have lost—­your treasure!  You cannot escape.  Go back and count your gold.  ’It is all good money’!  Ha! ha! ’it is all good money’!”