the slope up above, and he
found he could wriggle through. Once through, the passage widened and
continued to widen, and the going became very rough and broken, with
piles of ragged rock and deep black pitfalls in between.

Then, of a sudden, he saw the walls and roof of his passage fall away,
and his light flickered feebly in the darkness of a vast place, and he
crouched on the rock up which he had climbed, and sat in wonder.

Somewhere below him he could hear the slow rise and fall of water, dull
and heavy and without any splash, like the dumb breathing of a captive
monster.

And every now and again there came, from somewhere beyond, a low dull
thud, like the blow of a padded hammer, and a distant subdued rustle
along the outside of the darkness. He knew it was not inside the place
he was in, for he could hear the soft rise and fall of the water quite
clearly, but these other sounds came to him from a distance, muted as
though his ears had suddenly gone deaf.

"Those dull blows," he said to himself, "are the waves on the outside of
L'Etat. That low rustling is the rush of them along the lower rocks. The
water inside here probably comes in through some openings below
tide-level. I am quite safe here, even if they get past the dead man's
cave--quite safe until I starve. Unless there are fish to be had"--and
he felt a spark of hope. "And maybe there are devil-fish"--and he
shivered and glanced below and about him fearfully.

His homely torch did no more than faintly illumine the rock he sat on
and those close at hand, and cast a gigantic uncouth shadow of himself
on the rough wall behind. All beyond was solid darkness, blacker even
than a black Sark night.

He sat wondering vaguely if any before him had penetrated to that
strange place. It was odd and uncanny to feel that his eyes were the
very first to look upon it. And then, away in front, and apparently at a
great distance above him, he became aware of a difference in the solid
darkness. It seemed almost as though it had thinned. His eye had seemed
able for a moment to carry beyond the narrow circle of the torch, but
when he peered into the void to see what this might mean, it all seemed
solid as before.

As his straining eyes sought relief in something visible, their
side-glance caught once more that same impression of movement in the
darkness. And presently it came again and stronger--a strange greenish
fluttering up in the roof--very faint, as though the ro