"Your Majesty will surely not attempt it," said the Earl, with a shudder.
"Wherefore not? It is but a foretaste of Charon's boat!" said Mary, who was one of those people whose spirit of enterprise rises with the occasion, and she murmured to Mary Seaton the line of Dante—
"Quando noi fermerem li nostri passi
Su la triate riviera a' Acheronte."
"Will your Majesty enter?" asked John Eyre. "Dr. Jones and some gentlemen wait on the other side to receive you."
"Some gentlemen?" repeated Mary. "You are sure they are not Minos and Rhadamanthus, sir? My obolus is ready; shall I put it in my mouth?"
"Nay, madam, pardon me," said the Earl, spurred by a miserable sense of his duties; "since you will thus venture, far be it from me to let you pass over until I have reached the other aide to see that it is fit for your Majesty!"
"Even as you will, most devoted cavalier," said Mary, drawing back; "we will be content to play the part of the pale ghosts of the unburied dead a little longer. See, Mary, the boat sinks down with him and his mortal flesh! We shall have Charon complaining of him anon."
"Your Highness gars my flesh grue," was the answer of her faithful Mary.
"Ah, ma mie! we have not left all hope behind. We can afford to smile at the doleful knight, ferried o'er on his back, in duteous and loyal submission to his task mistress. Child, Cicely, where art thou? Art afraid to dare the black river?"
"No, madam, not with you on the other side, and my father to follow me."