Neither the king nor anybody else was satisfied with that arrangement, but I had to stick to my point.
It grew darker and darker and blacker and blacker, while I struggled with those awkward sixth-century clothes.

It got to be pitch dark, at last, and the multitude groaned with horror to feel the cold uncanny night breezes fan through the place and see the stars come out and twinkle in the sky.

At last the eclipse was total, and I was very glad of it, but everybody else was in misery; which was quite natural.

I said: "The king, by his silence, still stands to the terms." Then I lifted up my hands--stood just so a moment--then I said, with the most awful solemnity: "Let the enchantment dissolve and pass harmless away!" There was no response, for a moment, in that deep darkness and that graveyard hush.

But when the silver rim of the sun pushed itself out, a moment or two later, the assemblage broke loose with a vast shout and came pouring down like a deluge to smother me with blessings and gratitude; and Clarence was not the last of the wash, to be sure..