something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of
the table is obvious—but, in this particular cipher, we shall only
very partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8,
we will commence by assuming it as the _e_ of the natural alphabet.
To verify the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen often in
couples—for _e_ is doubled with great frequency in English—in such
words, for example, as ’meet,’ ’fleet,’ ’speed,’ ’seen,’ ’been,’
’a’gree,’ &c. In the present instance we see it doubled no less than
five times, although the cryptograph is brief.
“Let us assume 8, then, as _e_. Now, of all _words_ in the language,
‘the’ is most usual; let us see, therefore, whether there are not
repetitions of any three characters, in the same order of collocation,
the last of them being 8. If we discover repetitions of such letters,
so arranged, they will most probably represent the word ’the.’
On inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the
characters being ;48. We may, therefore, assume that the semicolon
represents _t_, that 4 represents _h_, and that 8 represents _e_—the
last being now well confirmed. Thus a great step has been taken.
“But, having established a single word, we are enabled to establish
a vastly important point; that is to say, several commencements and
terminations of other words. Let us refer, for example, to the last
instance but one, in which the combination ;48 occurs—not far from
the end of the cipher. We know that the semicolon immediately ensuing
is the commencement of a word, and, of the six characters succeeding
this ’the,’ we are cognizant of no less than five. Let us set these
characters down, thus, by the letters we know them to represent,
leaving a space for the unknown—
t eeth.
“Here we are enabled, at once, to discard the ’_th_,’ as forming no
portion of the word commencing with the first _t_; since, by experiment
of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the vacancy, we perceive
that no word can be formed of which this _th_ can be a part. We are
thus narrowed into
t ee,
and, going through the alphabet, if necessary, as before, we arrive
at the word ’tree’ as the sole possible reading. We thus gain
another letter, _r_, represented by (, with the words ’the tree’ in
juxtaposition.
“Looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again see
the combination ;48, and employ it by way of _termination_ to what
immediately precedes. We have thus this arrangement:
the tree ;4(‡?34 the,
or, substituting the natural letters, where known, it reads thus:
the tree thr‡?3h the.
“Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces, or
substitute dots, we read thus:
the tree thr . . . h the,
when the word ’_through_’ makes itself evident at once. But this
discovery gives us three new letters, _o_, _u_, and _g_, represented by
‡ ? and 3.
“Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations of known
characters, we find, not very far from the beginning, this arrangement,
83(88, or egree,
which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word ’degree,’ and gives us
another letter, _d_, represented by †.
“Four letters beyond the word ’degree,’ we perceive the combination
;46(;88*
“Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown by
dots, as before, we read thus:
th . rtee . ,
an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word ’thirteen,’ and again
furnishing us with two new characters, _i_ and _n_, represented by 6
and *.
“Referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the
combination,
53‡‡†.
“Translating, as before, we obtain
good,
which assures us that the first letter is _A_, and that the first two
words are ’A good.’
“To avoid confusion, it is now time that we arrange our key, as far as
discovered, in a tabular form. It will stand thus:
5 represents a
† “ d
8 “ e
3 “ g
4 “ h
6 “ i
* “ n
‡ “ o
( “ r
; “ t
“We have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important letters
represented, and it will be unnecessary to proceed with the details
of the solution. I have said enough to convince you that ciphers of
this nature are readily soluble, and to give you some insight into the
rationale of their development. But be assured that the specimen before
us appertains to the very simplest species of cryptograph. It now only
remains to give you the full translation of the characters upon the
parchment, as unriddled. Here it is:
_“‘A good glass in the Bishop’s hostel in the devil’s seat twenty-one
degrees and thirteen minutes north-east and by north main branch
seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the death’s-head a
bee-line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.’”_
“But,” said I, “the enigma seems still in as bad a condition as ever.
How is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon about
’devil’s seats,’ ’death’s-heads,’ and ’Bishop’s hotels’?”
“I confess,” replied Legrand, “that the matter still wears a serious
aspect, when regarded with a casual glance. My first endeavor was
to divide the sentence into the natural division intended by the
cryptographist.”
“You mean, to punctuate it?”
“Something of that kind.”
“But how was it possible to effect this?”
“I reflected that it had been a _point_ with the writer to run his
words together without division, so as to increase the difficulty of
solution. Now, a not over-acute man, in pursuing such an object, would
be nearly certain to overdo the matter. When, in the course of his
composition, he arrived at a break in his subject which would naturally
require a pause, or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to run his
characters, at this place, more than usually close together. If you
will observe the MS., in the present instance, you will easily detect
five such cases of unusual crowding. Acting on this hint, I made the
division thus:
_“‘A good glass in the Bishop’s hostel in the Devil’s seat—twenty-one
degrees and thirteen minutes—north-east and by north—main branch
seventh limb east side—shoot from the left eye of the death’s-head—a
bee-line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.’”_
“Even this division,” said I, “leaves me still in the dark.”
“It left me also in the dark,” replied Legrand, “for a few days; during
which I made diligent inquiry, in the neighborhood of Sullivan’s
Island, for any building which went by the name of the ’Bishop’s
Hotel’; for, of course, I dropped the obsolete word ’hostel.’ Gaining
no information on the subject, I was on the point of extending my
sphere of search, and proceeding in a more systematic manner, when one
morning it entered into my head, quite suddenly, that this ’Bishop’s
Hostel’ might have some reference to an old family, of the name of
Bessop, which, time out of mind, had held possession of an ancient
manor-house, about four miles to the northward of the island. I
accordingly went over to the plantation, and reinstituted my inquiries
among the older negroes of the place. At length one of the most aged
of the women said that she had heard of such a place as _Bessop’s
Castle_, and thought that she could guide me to it, but that it was not
a castle, nor a tavern, but a high rock.
“I offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur,
she consented to accompany me to the spot. We found it without much
difficulty, when, dismissing her, I proceeded to examine the place. The
’castle’ consisted of an irregular assemblage of cliffs and rocks—one
of the latter being quite remarkable for its height as well as for its
insulated and artificial appearance. I clambered to its apex, and then
felt much at a loss as to what should be next done.
“While I was busied in reflection, my eyes fell on a narrow ledge in
the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon
which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not
more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it gave
it a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our
ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the ’devil’s seat’ alluded to
in the MS., and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle.
“The ’good glass,’ I knew, could have reference to nothing but a
telescope; for the word ’glass’ is rarely employed in any other sense
by seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope to be used, and a
definite point of view, _admitting no variation_, from which to use it.
Nor did I hesitate to believe that the phrases, ’twenty-one degrees
and thirteen minutes,’ and ‘north-east and by north,’ were intended as
directions for the levelling of the glass. Greatly excited by these
discoveries, I hurried home, procured a telescope, and returned to the
rock.
“I let myself down the ledge, and found that it was impossible to
retain a seat on it unless in one particular position. This fact
confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use the glass. Of
course, the ’twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes’ could allude to
nothing but elevation above the visible horizon, since the horizontal
direction was clearly indicated by the words, ‘north-east and by
north.’ This latter direction I at once established by means of a
pocket-compass; then, pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of
twenty-one degrees of elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it
cautiously up or down, until my attention was arrested by a circular
rift or opening in the foliage of a large tree that overtopped its
fellows in the distance. In the centre of this rift I perceived a white
spot, but could not, at first, distinguish what it was. Adjusting the
focus of the telescope, I again looked, and now made it out to be a
human skull.
“On this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved;
for the phrase ’main branch, seventh limb, east side,’ could refer only
to the position of the skull on the tree, while ’shoot from the left
eye of the death’s-head’ admitted, also, of but one interpretation, in
regard to a search for buried treasure. I perceived that the design was
to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that a bee-line,
or, in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest point of
the trunk through ’the shotì (or the spot where the bullet fell), and
thence extended to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate a definite
point—and beneath this point I thought it at least _possible_ that a
deposit of value lay concealed.”
“All this,” I said, “is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious,
still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop’s Hotel, what
then?”
“Why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I turned
homewards. The instant that I left ’the devil’s seat,’ however, the
circular rift vanished; nor could I get a glimpse of it afterwards,
turn as I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity in this whole
business, is the fact (for repeated experiment has convinced me it _is_
a fact) that the circular opening in question is visible from no other
attainable point of view than that afforded by the narrow ledge on the
face of the rock.
“In this expedition to the ’Bishop’s Hotel’ I had been attended
by Jupiter, who had no doubt observed, for some weeks past, the
abstraction of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave me
alone. But on the next day, getting up very early, I contrived to give
him the slip, and went into the hills in search of the tree. After much
toil I found it. When I came home at night my valet proposed to give me
a flogging. With the rest of the adventure I believe you are as well
acquainted as myself.”
“I suppose,” said I, “you missed the spot, in the first attempt at
digging, through Jupiter’s stupidity in letting the bug fall through
the right instead of through the left eye of the skull.”
“Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two inches and a
half in the ’shot’—that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest
the tree; and had the treasure been _beneath_ the ’shot,’ the error
would have been of little moment; but ’the shot,’ together with the
nearest point of the tree, were merely two points for the establishment
of a line of direction; of course the error, however trivial in the
beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and, by the time
we had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. But for my
deep-seated convictions that treasure was here somewhere actually
buried, we might have had all our labor in vain.”
“I presume the fancy of _the skull_—of letting fall a bullet through
the skull’s eye—was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt
he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through
this ominous insignium.”
“Perhaps so; still, I cannot help thinking that common-sense had
quite as much to do with the matter as poetical consistency. To be
visible from the Devil’s seat, it was necessary that the object, if
small, should be _white_; and there is nothing like your human skull
for retaining and even increasing its whiteness under exposure to all
vicissitudes of weather.”
“But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle—how
excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist on
letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull?”
“Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions
touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my
own way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I
swung the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An
observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter idea.”
“Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me.
What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?”
“That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There
seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them—and
yet it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would
imply. It is clear that Kidd—if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure,
which I doubt not—it is clear that he must have had assistance in the
labor. But, the worst of this labor concluded, he may have thought it
expedient to remove all participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of
blows with a mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in
the pit; perhaps it required a dozen—who shall tell?”
THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF
BY
O. HENRY
This is a plot-story of the kind in which the American public delights.
The reader enjoys the humor due to situation, hyperbole, satire, and
astounding verbal liberties to which the writer is given; but he enjoys
even more the sharp surprise that awaits him in the plot. He has
prepared himself for a certain conclusion and finds himself entirely in
the wrong. Nevertheless, he admits that the ending is not illogical nor
out of harmony with the general tone. Bill and Sam subscribe themselves
“Two Desperate Men,” but they are so characterized as to prepare us for
their surrender of the boy on the father’s own terms.
It is interesting to know that O. Henry himself put slight value
upon local color. “People say that I know New York well!” he says.
“But change Twenty-third Street to Main Street, rub out the Flatiron
Building and put in the Town Hall. Then the story will fit just as
truly elsewhere. At least, I hope that is the case with what I write.
So long as your story is true to life, the mere change of local color
will set it in the East, West, South, or North. The characters in ’The
Arabian Nights’ parade up and down Broadway at midday, or Main Street
in Dallas, Texas.”
THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF[11]
It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. “We were down
South, in Alabama—Bill Driscoll and myself—when this kidnapping idea
struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, “during a moment of
temporary mental apparition”; but we didn’t find that out till later.
There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called
Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and
self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.
Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and
we needed, just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent
town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the
front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in
semirural communities; therefore, and for other reasons, a kidnapping
project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that
send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things.
We knew that Summit couldn’t get after us with anything stronger than
constables and, maybe, some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or
two in the _Weekly Farmers’ Budget_. So, it looked good.
We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named
Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage
fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser.
The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the color
of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand when you want
to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for
a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you.
About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense
cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There
we stored provisions.
One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset’s house.
The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite
fence.
“Hey, little boy!” says Bill, “would you like to have a bag of candy
and a nice ride?”
The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.
“That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars,” says Bill,
climbing over the wheel.
That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at
last, we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We
took him up to the cave, and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake.
After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away,
where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.
Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his
features. There was a fire burning behind the big rock at the entrance
of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two
buzzard tail-feathers stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me
when I come up, and says:
“Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the
terror of the plains?”
“He’s all right now,” says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining
some bruises on his shins. “We’re playing Indian. We’re making Buffalo
Bill’s show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town
hall. I’m Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief’s captive, and I’m to be
scalped at daybreak. By Geronimo! that kid can kick hard.”
Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun
of camping out in a cave had made him forget that he was a captive
himself. He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced
that, when his braves returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at
the stake at the rising of the sun.
Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and
gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech something like
this:
“I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet ’possum
once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school. Rats ate
up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot’s aunt’s speckled hen’s eggs. Are there any
real Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees
moving make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes your nose so
red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I whipped
Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I don’t like girls. You dassent catch toads
unless with a string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round?
Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six
toes. A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can’t. How many does it
take to make twelve?”
Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and
pick up his stick rifle and tip-toe to the mouth of the cave to rubber
for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a
war-whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper, shiver. That boy had Bill
terrorized from the start.
“Red Chief,” says I to the kid, “would you like to go home?”
“Aw, what for?” says he. “I don’t have any fun at home. I hate to go
to school. I like to camp out. You won’t take me back home again,
Snake-eye, will you?”
“Not right away,” says I. “We’ll stay here in the cave a while.”
“All right!” says he. “That’ll be fine. I never had such fun in all my
life.”
We went to bed about eleven o ’clock. We spread down some wide blankets
and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren’t afraid he’d run
away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching for
his rifle and screeching: “Hist! pard,” in mine and Bill’s ears, as
the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his
young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I
fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and
chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair.
Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from
Bill. They weren’t yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps,
such as you’d expect from a manly set of vocal organs—they were simply
indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when
they see ghosts or caterpillars. It’s an awful thing to hear a strong,
desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.
I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill’s
chest, with one hand twined in Bill’s hair. In the other he had the
sharp case-knife we used for slicing bacon; and he was industriously
and realistically trying to take Bill’s scalp, according to the
sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before.
I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But,
from that moment, Bill’s spirit was broken. He laid down on his side
of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that
boy was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I
remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at
the rising of the sun. I wasn’t nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit
my pipe and leaned against a rock.
“What you getting up so soon for, Sam?” asked Bill.
“Me?” says I. “Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I thought
sitting up would rest it.”
“You’re a liar!” says Bill. “You’re afraid. You was to be burned at
sunrise, and you was afraid he’d do it. And he would, too, if he could
find a match. Ain’t it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out
money to get a little imp like that back home?”
“Sure,” said I. “A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that parents
dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast, while I go
up on the top of this mountain and reconnoitre.”
I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the
contiguous vicinity. Over toward Summit I expected to see the sturdy
yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the
countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful
landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was
dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings
of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of
somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward
surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. “Perhaps,” says I to
myself, “it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have borne away
the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!” says I, and
I went down the mountain to breakfast.
When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it,
breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half
as big as a cocoanut.
“He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back,” explained Bill, “and
then mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun
about you, Sam?”
I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument.
“I’ll fix you,” says the kid to Bill. “No man ever yet struck the Red
Chief but what he got paid for it. You better beware!”
After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped
around it out of his pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it.
“What’s he up to now?” says Bill, anxiously. “You don’t think he’ll run
away, do you, Sam?”