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.
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.