"Can you read it?" I asked.
"With difficulty," he said, "by this light. Let us return to my rooms
and see if we can decimate it."
"Decipher, decipher, Hans," said I.
"As you will," he retorted, with a sweep of the oars which brought us
under the shadow of the wharf.
Tying our boat, we hastened back to Pumpernickel's rooms, and within a
half-hour of our find we were busily engaged in translating the
extraordinary narrative of Captain Hammerpestle, commander of the
_Gretchen B._, a ship that, as we learned from the captain's story, was
once of ill-repute, later of pleasant memory, and finally the central
figure of an ocean mystery never as yet solved, though at least two
hundred and fifty years had passed since she was given up for lost.
The story was in substance as follows: