I went and lay on my bunk. Sunde, who was sharing my cabin, came in shortly afterwards. He lay tossing for a long time. I fought off the desire to sleep and lay staring into the darkness. The ship was silent. There was no movement, no sound of water lapping against the hull. The utter stillness seemed unreal. Sunde began to snore. I thought of the grave in the churchyard under the mountains. There was something frightening about the thought of opening it up. Perhaps Curtis had been right. Perhaps we shouldn't do it. Body-snatching was something revolting. But we weren't body-snatching. We were trying to get at the truth of a man's death. The desire for sleep left me then and I lay in the dark, wondering how the hell I was to tell whether Farnell had died a natural death without a doctor to examine the body.
But I had made up my mind to see Farnell's body and at eleven-thirty I rose quietly and slipped on my rubber shoes. Dick was waiting for me up on deck. A faint light showed behind the mountains. The moon was rising. We only had one pick and one shovel. I got these from the lazaret and lowered them into the dinghy which Dick had pulled alongside. Curtis came up and joined us. I got my torch from the chartroom. 'In you get,' I said to Dick. He lowered himself quietly over the side. Curtis followed. Then a hand gripped my arm. I swung round. Dahler was standing beside me. 'I have been waiting for you,' he whispered. 'I also wish to see the body.'
'How did you know what we were going to do?' I asked him.
He smiled. I could see the line of his teeth in the dark. 'You are a man of determination, Mr Gansert,' he replied. 'You do not come all the way to Fjaerland for nothing.'
I nodded to the boat. 'Get in,' I said.
I followed him down. Dick and Curtis had the oars out. I pushed the boat clear. The outline of the yacht's hull vanished in the darkness as the rowlocks creaked to the thrust of the oars. The jagged rim of the mountains sharpened to a black line against the moonlit sky as we rowed towards Fjaerland. We rounded the headland and hugged the line of the shore. There were no lights showing at Fjaerland now. There was a deathly stillness in the air. The only sound was the creak of the oars and the gurgle of water coming down from the mountains.
As the sky brightened and our eyes became accustomed to the darkness, we were able to make out the dark line of the shore and the huddled mass of buildings round the quay at Fjaerland. The sound of water grew louder as we approached the torrent that ran into the fjord below the church. And then we saw the church itself, standing black and silent on its mound. I directed the boat towards the shore. We spoke in whispers. The bows suddenly jarred against a stone and then grated on pebbles. We clambered out and slipped the painter round a rock. Then we started up the slope to the graveyard.
That graveyard — it is difficult to describe how it felt in the half darkness with the mountains towering over it. It was just like any other graveyard really, and yet… The trouble was we came as thieves in the night. And a guilty conscience isn't the best companion in a graveyard. We located the newly painted cross and fresh sods of Farnell's resting place without difficulty. I seized hold of the shovel and cleared the turves and pulled up the cross. Then we began to dig. The ground below the surface was hard as iron. We sweated and grunted as we swung the pick into the frozen soil. Slowly, very slowly, the narrow pit opened up. It was hard, back-breaking work. We stripped to our vests and sweated in the chill air, our breath steaming.
Then the moon rose over the lip of the mountains. The snow shone white and cold. The piled-up ice of the Suphelle glacier glistened a cold green. The waters of the fjord looked blacker than ever. As I stood back and handed my pick to Curtis, I glanced past the church to the village. All was quiet as the grave. Yet I had the awful feeling that we were being watched, that at any moment irate villagers might rush to protect their little graveyard from this sacrilege. 'See anybody?' Dick asked in a whisper.
'No,' I answered. My voice was harsh.