He waited until the cloud sank, then he said, "Do you know--but you cannot know what it is to be sent from pillar to post and wait in antechambers where the air stifles, and doff cap--who have been captain of ships!--to chamberlain, page and lackey?
To be called dreamer, adventurer, dicer! To hear the laugh and catch the sneer! To be the persuader, the beggar of good and bad, high and low--to beg year in and year out, cold and warmth, summer and winter, sunrise, noon and sunset, calm and storm, beg of galleon and beg of carrack, yea, beg of cockboat! To see your family go needy, to be doubted by wife and child and brethren and friends and acquaintance! To have them say, 'While you dream we go hungry!' and 'What good will it do us if there is India, while we famish in Spain ?' and 'You love us not, or you would become a prosperous sea captain!'-- Not one year but eighteen, eighteen, since I saw in vision the sun set not behind water but behind vale and hill and mountain and cities rich beyond counting, and smelled the spice draught from the land!" I saw that he must count upon huge indemnity.

We all dream indemnity.
But still I thought and think that there was here a weakness in him.

Far inward he may have known it himself, the outer self was so busy finding grounds! After a moment he spoke again, "Little things bring little reward.

But to keep proportion and harmony, great thing must bring great things! You do not know what it is to cross where no man hath crossed and to find what no man hath found!" "Yes, it is a great thing!" "Then," said he, "what is it, that which I ask, to the grandeur of time!" He spoke with a lifted face, eyes upon the mountain crests and the blue they touched.

They were nearer us than they had been; the Pass of Elvira was at hand.