The sword goes back

Arthur is dying. Of the whole fellowship there are two men left alive on the field — Lucan and Bedivere — and Lucan dies of his wounds while trying to lift the king.

Arthur tells Bedivere to take Excalibur, go to the water's edge, throw it in, and come back and tell him what he sees.

Bedivere goes. He looks at the sword — the pommel and haft all of precious stones — and thinks that no good can come of throwing away something so valuable, and hides it under a tree, and comes back and says he saw nothing but waves and wind.

Arthur knows immediately. He tells him he has lied, and sends him again.

Bedivere goes again, and again cannot do it — Malory says it seemed to him a sin and a shame to throw away so noble a sword — and hides it, and comes back, and lies again.

And Arthur, dying, is furious with him in a way he has not been with anyone in the entire book: Ah, traitor untrue, now hast thou betrayed me twice. Twice, by the man who is the last one left.

The third time Bedivere does it. He wraps the girdle round the hilts and throws it as far into the water as he can.

And there came an arm and an hand above the water and met it, and caught it, and so shook it thrice and brandished, and then vanished away the hand with the sword in the water.

The loan made in Book I is called in. And the thing worth noticing is how ordinary the obstacle was: not treachery, not cowardice, not a test of virtue. A grieving man looked at a beautiful object and could not see the sense in destroying it, twice, while his king lay dying twenty yards away.