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 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.