Beatrice had begged hard to accompany them, but this Godfrey would not permit. So she watched them from the garden-gate till they were out of sight, and then returned indoors to alarm herself by reading the adventures of Belzoni in the Great Pyramid, finding some sort of affinity between the expedition of Idris and that of the enterprizing Paduan.
The night was lovely and cloudless, with a full moon shining from a sky of darkest blue.
Shimmering white in the hallowed radiance arose the lofty tomb of the long-buried Viking, and as the two friends made their way towards it the character of the undertaking began to oppress the mind of Godfrey with various strange fancies. What the interior of the hillock would reveal he could not tell; but he had forebodings of something grim and ghostly. Though it was of his own free will that he came, yet now, brought close to the intended task, he shrank from it, and found himself yielding to a spirit of fear.
He could not but admire the unconcern of his companion, who strode gallantly forward, humming the chorus of a hunting-song.
"Confound yon bright moon!" muttered Idris. "If any of the coast-guard should stroll this way, we are certain to be seen."
Arrived at the northernmost point of the tumulus, he flung down the sack that he had carried containing the implements necessary for excavation, and turning his eyes upon the side of the hillock began to look about for the white-flowering mandrake that betokened the point of ingress.
He glanced quickly from right to left, but, to his surprise, the plant was nowhere to be seen.
"Here's a mystery! What has become of the mandrake?—No matter: there's the pile of pebbles I set up on the spot where the shadow of the stone fell. I have but to repeat my former experiment."
Making his way to the little heap Idris faced about, and then began to walk towards the hillock, keeping in a direct line with the stone upon its apex.
On reaching the base of the tumulus he paused and remained stationary, with his back to Godfrey, and his gaze riveted on the side of the mound. There was something so peculiar in the rigidity of his attitude, and in his long-continued silence, that Godfrey's heart quickened with an unknown fear, a fear that deepened, when Idris, with a scared face turned slowly round, and, as if the power of speech had left him, beckoned with his finger for the surgeon to come forward.