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.
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