the dark, it came open and left him no possible room for doubt as to
what those contents were. He sneezed till the top of his head seemed
like to lift, and the tears ran down his cheeks in an unceasing stream.
What had once been tobacco had powdered into snuff, and his rough
handling of the package had scattered it broadcast.

He turned at last, and lay with his head in his arms against the wall
until the air should have time to clear, and meanwhile the sneezing had
quickened his wits.

Here was possible tinder, and by means of those dried-up wrappings he
might procure a light. If it lasted but five minutes it might enable him
to solve the problem on which he had stumbled.

He groped again for the opened package, and found it on the dead man's
face. The wrapper was of tarred cloth, almost perished with age, dry and
friable. Shaking out the rest of the snuff at arm's length, he picked
the stuff to pieces and shredded it into tinder. Then he felt about for
half-a-dozen more packages, carefully slipped their cords and emptied
out their contents, and getting out his flint and steel, flaked sparks
into the tinder till it caught and flared, and the interior of the
cavern leaped at him out of its darkness.

He rolled up one of the empty wrappers like a torch, and lit it, and
looked about him.

His first hasty glance fell on the dead man, and he got another shock
from the fact that his feet were lashed together with stout rope, and
probably his hands also, for they were behind his back, and he lay face
upward. His coat and short-clothes and buckled shoes spoke of long
by-gone days, and the skin of his face was brown and shrivelled, so that
the bones beneath showed grim and gaunt.

Beyond him was a great heap of the same small packages of tobacco, and
alongside them a pile of small kegs. Gard lit another of his torches,
and stepped gingerly over to them. He sounded one or two, but found them
empty. Time had shrunk their stout timbers and tapped their contents.

Then he held up his flickering light and looked quickly round this
prison-house which had turned into a tomb, and shivered, as a dim idea
of what it all meant came over him.

It was a large, low, natural rock chamber, and all round the walls were
black slits which might mean it passages leading on into the bowels of
the island. To investigate them all would mean the work of many days.

The dead man, the perished packages, the empty kegs--there was nothing
else,