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.
He rolled up one of the empty wrappers like a torch, and lit it, and
looked about him.
His first hasty glance fell on the dead man, and he got another shock
from the fact that his feet were lashed together with stout rope, and
probably his hands also, for they were behind his back, and he lay face
upward. His coat and short-clothes and buckled shoes spoke of long
by-gone days, and the skin of his face was brown and shrivelled, so that
the bones beneath showed grim and gaunt.
Beyond him was a great heap of the same small packages of tobacco, and
alongside them a pile of small kegs. Gard lit another of his torches,
and stepped gingerly over to them. He sounded one or two, but found them
empty. Time had shrunk their stout timbers and tapped their contents.
Then he held up his flickering light and looked quickly round this
prison-house which had turned into a tomb, and shivered, as a dim idea
of what it all meant came over him.
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