He clung to his right-hand wall as to a life-rope.  If he once got mazed in a place like that he might never taste daylight and upper air again.

Of the size of the chamber he could so far form no opinion.  He would have given much for a light.  His flint and steel were indeed in his pocket, but he was sodden through and through, and had no means whatever of catching a spark if he struck one.

Then, as he groped cautiously along past the third opening, his progress was stayed, and not by rock.

He was on his knees, his hands feeling blindly, but with infinite enquiry, along the rough rock wall, when he stumbled suddenly over something that lay along the ground.  Dropping his hands to save himself from falling, they lighted on that which lay below, and he started back with an exclamation and a shudder.  For what he had felt was like the hair and face of a man.

He crouched back against the wall, his heart thumping like a ship’s pump, and the blood belling in his ears, and sat so for very many minutes; sat on, until, in that silent blackness, he could hear the dull, far-away thud of the waves on the outer walls of the island.

Then, by degrees, he pulled himself together.  If it was indeed a man, he was undoubtedly dead, and therefore harmless; and having learned this much he would know more.

So presently he groped forward, felt again the round head and soft hair, and below it and beyond it a heap of what felt like small oblong packages done up in wrappings of cloth and tied round with cord.

He picked one up and handled it inquisitively, with a shrewd idea of what might be, or might have been, inside.  The cord was very loose, as though the contents had shrunk since it was tied.  As he fumbled with it in 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.