"Never."
"Of course not. Is it not written, 'O all ye winds of God, bless ye the Lord?' Now as I lay on my bed last night, methought the sounds took articulate form, and they were words of cursing and blasphemy, such as might have come from a lost soul."
A modern would say that the hermit had a sort of nightmare, but in those credulous days the supernatural solution was always accepted.
"And, my son, if there be, as I fear, evil spirits who lurk in the bowels of the earth, and lure men to their destruction, I would not allow thee to rush into danger."
"No, brother, think no more of it," said Richard.
And Evroult promised not to do so, if he could help it.
"There be caves in the African deserts, of which I have heard, where fiends do haunt, and terrify travellers even to death. One there was which was, to look upon, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, but they who passed a night there—and it was the only resting-place in the desert for many weary miles—went mad, frightened out of their senses by some awful vision which blasted those who gazed."
"But ought Christian men to fear such things?"
"No; neither ought they without a call to endanger themselves: 'He shall give His Angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways.' Now our way does not lie through these dark abodes."
So the caves remained unexplored.