, for all his substance had long since withered out of him--and
laid him in the tunnel as though he was making his way out.

If he knew anything of Sark men and miners, he felt fairly secure for
some time to come, so he sat himself down, as far as possible from the
snuff, and made such a meal as was possible off puffins' eggs, mixed
good and bad and unredeemed by any palliating odour and flavour. They
were not appetising, but they stayed his stomach for the time being.

It was only then that he remembered that he had left his gun and
powder-flask behind him. He had placed them on a ledge just inside the
mouth of the tunnel, and in his haste had forgotten to pick them up. He
had no intention of using them, however, and he would not go back for
them.

When his scanty meal was done, he cautiously emptied a number of the
packages and rolled them into torches, and deliberated as to which of
the black openings he should attempt first.

That one opposite, out of which the dead man's legs sprawled
grotesquely, was the one by which he had entered. This one, then, near
which he sat, must run on towards the centre of the island--if it ran on
at all; and, since all were equally unknown and hopeful, he would try
this first.

His tarred paper torches, though they burned with a clear flame, gave
forth a somewhat pungent odour, so he kicked one of the small barrels to
pieces, and with three of the staves and a piece of string made a holder
which would carry the torch upright, and also permit him to lay it on
the ground or push it in front of him, if need be.

The first tunnel ran in about thirty feet, and then the slant of the
roof met the floor at so sharp an angle that further passage was
impossible.

The second, third, and fourth the same; and he began to fear they were
all blind alleys leading nowhere.

The openings near his own entrance tunnel he had left till the last,
since they obviously led outwards.

Two of them shut down in the same way as all the others, and it was only
the dogged determination to leave no chance untried that drove him, with
a fresh supply of torches, down the last one of all, the one alongside
that out of which the dead man's legs projected.

It took a turn to the left within a dozen feet of the entrance, and,
like the rest, it presently narrowed down through a slope in the roof;
but just at its narrowest, when he feared he had come to the end, there
came a dip in the flooring corresponding to