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.
His homely torch did no more than faintly illumine the rock he sat on and those close at hand, and cast a gigantic uncouth shadow of himself on the rough wall behind. All beyond was solid darkness, blacker even than a black Sark night.
He sat wondering vaguely if any before him had penetrated to that strange place. It was odd and uncanny to feel that his eyes were the very first to look upon it. And then, away in front, and apparently at a great distance above him, he became aware of a difference in the solid darkness. It seemed almost as though it had thinned. His eye had seemed able for a moment to carry beyond the narrow circle of the torch, but when he peered into the void to see what this might mean, it all seemed solid as before.
As his straining eyes sought relief in something visible, their side-glance caught once more that same impression of movement in the darkness. And presently it came again and stronger—a strange greenish fluttering up in the roof—very faint, as though the roof were smoke on which a soft green light played for a moment and vanished.