to a more methodical investigation of the affair. In the first place I
considered the manner in which the parchment had come into my
possession. The spot where we discovered the _scarabæus_ was on the
coast of the mainland, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a
short distance above high-water mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it
gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with his
accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown towards
him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature, by which
to take hold of it. It was at this moment that his eyes, and mine also,
fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to be paper. It
was lying half buried in the sand, a corner sticking up. Near the spot
where we found it I observed the remnants of the hull of what appeared
to have been a ship's long-boat. The wreck seemed to have been there
for a very great while; for the resemblance to boat timbers could
scarcely be traced.
"Well, Jupiter picked up the parchment, wrapped the beetle in it, and
gave it to me. Soon afterwards we turned to go home, and on the way met
Lieutenant G----. I showed him the insect, and he begged me to let him
take it to the fort. Upon my consenting, he thrust it forthwith into
his waistcoat-pocket, without the parchment in which it had been
wrapped, and which I had continued to hold in my hand during his
inspection. Perhaps he dreaded my changing my mind, and thought it best
to make sure of the prize at once,--you know how enthusiastic he is on
all subjects connected with Natural History. At the same time, without
being conscious of it, I must have deposited the parchment in my own
pocket.
"You remember that when I went to the table, for the purpose of making
a sketch of the beetle, I found no paper where it was usually kept. I
looked in the drawer, and found none there. I searched my pockets,
hoping to find an old letter, when my hand fell upon the parchment. I
thus detail the precise mode in which it came into my possession; for
the circumstances impressed me with peculiar force.
"No doubt you will think me fanciful,--but I had already established a
kind of _connection_. I had put together two links of a great chain.
There was a boat lying upon a sea-coast, and not far from the boat was
a parchment--_not a paper_--with a skull depicted upon it. You will, of
course, ask, 'Where is the connection?' I reply that the skull, or
death's-head, is the well-known emblem of the pirate. The flag of the
death's-head is hoisted in all engagements.
"I have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper. Parchment is
durable,--almost imperishable. Matters of little moment are rarely
consigned to parchment; since, for the mere ordinary purposes of
drawing or writing, it is not nearly so well adapted as paper. This
reflection suggested some meaning--some relevancy--in the death's-head.
I did not fail to observe, also, the _form_ of the parchment. Although
one of its corners had been, by some accident, destroyed, it could be
seen that the original form was oblong. It was just such a slip,
indeed, as might have been chosen for a memorandum,--for a record of
something to be long remembered and carefully preserved."
"But," I interposed, "you say that the skull was _not_ upon the
parchment when you made the drawing of the beetle. How then do you
trace any connection between the boat and the skull,--since this
latter, according to your own admission, must have been designed (God
only knows how or by whom) at some period subsequent to your sketching
the _scarabæus_?"
"Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery; although the secret, at this
point, I had comparatively little difficulty in solving. My steps were
sure, and could afford but a single result. I reasoned, for example,
thus: When I drew the _scarabæus_, there was no skull apparent upon the
parchment. When I had completed the drawing I gave it to you, and
observed you narrowly until you returned it. _You_, therefore, did not
design the skull, and no one else was present to do it. Then it was not
done by human agency. And nevertheless it was done.
"At this stage of my reflections I endeavored to remember, and _did_
remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which occurred about
the period in question. The weather was chilly, (O rare and happy
accident!) and a fire was blazing upon the hearth. I was heated with
exercise, and sat near the table. You, however, had drawn a chair close
to the chimney. Just as I placed the parchment in your hand, and as you
were in the act of inspecting it, Wolf, the Newfoundland, entered, and
leaped upon your shoulders. With your left hand you caressed him and
kept him off, while your right, holding the parchment, was permitted to
fall listlessly between your knees, and in close proximity to the fire.
At one moment I thought the blaze had caught it, and was about to
caution you, but, before I could speak, you had withdrawn it, and were
engaged in its examination. When I considered all these particulars, I
doubted not for a moment that _heat_ had been the agent in bringing to
light, upon the parchment, the skull which I saw designed upon it. You
are well aware that chemical preparations exist, and have existed time
out of mind, by means of which it is possible to write upon either
paper or vellum, so that the characters shall become visible only when
subjected to the action of fire. Zaffre, digested in _aqua regia_, and
diluted with four times its weight of water, is sometimes employed; a
green tint results. The regulus of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of
nitre, gives a red. These colors disappear at longer or shorter
intervals after the material written upon cools, but again become
apparent upon the re-application of heat.
"I now scrutinized the death's-head with care. Its outer edges--the
edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vellum--were far more
_distinct_ than the others. It was clear that the action of the caloric
had been imperfect or unequal. I immediately kindled a fire, and
subjected every portion of the parchment to a glowing heat. At first,
the only effect was the strengthening of the faint lines in the skull;
but, upon persevering in the experiment, there became visible, at the
corner of the slip, diagonally opposite to the spot in which the
death's-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first supposed to
be a goat. A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was
intended for a kid."
"Ha! ha!" said I, "to be sure I have no right to laugh at you,--a
million and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth,--but you
are not about to establish a third link in your chain,--you will not
find any especial connection between your pirates and a goat,--pirates,
you know, have nothing to do with goats; they appertain to the farming
interest."
"But I have just said that the figure was _not_ that of a goat."
"Well, a kid then,--pretty much the same thing."
"Pretty much, but not altogether," said Legrand. "You may have heard of
one _Captain_ Kidd. I at once looked upon the figure of the animal as a
kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature. I say signature; because
its position upon the vellum suggested this idea. The death's-head at
the corner diagonally opposite had, in the same manner, the air of a
stamp, or seal. But I was sorely put out by the absence of all else--of
the body to my imagined instrument--of the text for my context."
"I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the
signature."
"Something of that kind. The fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed
with a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can scarcely
say why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an actual
belief;--but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, about the bug
being of solid gold, had a remarkable effect upon my fancy? And then
the series of accidents and coincidences,--these were so _very_
extraordinary. Do you observe how mere an accident it was that these
events should have occurred upon the _sole_ day of all the year in
which it has been, or may be, sufficiently cool for fire, and that
without the fire, or without the intervention of the dog at the precise
moment in which he appeared, I should never have become aware of the
death's-head, and so never the possessor of the treasure?"
"But proceed,--I am all impatience."
"Well; you have heard, of course, the many stories current,--the
thousand vague rumors afloat about money buried, somewhere upon the
Atlantic coast, by Kidd and his associates. These rumors must have had
some foundation in fact. And that the rumors have existed so long and
so continuously could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the
circumstance of the buried treasure still _remaining_ entombed. Had
Kidd concealed his plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it, the
rumors would scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying form.
You will observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not
about money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his money, there the
affair would have dropped. It seemed to me that some accident--say the
loss of a memorandum indicating its locality--had deprived him of the
means of recovering it, and that this accident had become known to his
followers, who otherwise might never have heard that treasure had been
concealed at all, and who, busying themselves in vain, because
unguided, attempts to regain it, had given first birth, and then
universal currency, to the reports which are now so common. Have you
ever heard of any important treasure being unearthed along the coast?"
"Never."
"But that Kidd's accumulations were immense, is well known. I took it
for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them; and you will
scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly
amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found, involved
a lost record of the place of deposit."
"But how did you proceed?"
"I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat; but
nothing appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt
might have something to do with the failure; so I carefully rinsed the
parchment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, I
placed it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards, and put the pan upon
a furnace of lighted charcoal. In a few minutes, the pan having become
thoroughly heated, I removed the slip, and, to my inexpressible joy,
found it spotted, in several places, with what appeared to be figures
arranged in lines. Again I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to
remain another minute. Upon taking it off, the whole was just as you
see it now."
Here Legrand, having re-heated the parchment, submitted it to my
inspection. The following characters were rudely traced, in a red tint,
between the death's-head and the goat:--
53$$+305))6*;4826)4$.)4$);806*;48+8¶60))85;1$(;:$*8+83
(88)5*+;46(;88*96*?;8)*$(;485);5*+2:*$(;4956*2(5*--4)8¶8*
;4069285);)6+8)4$$;1($9;48081;8:8$1;48+85;4)485+528806*
81($9;48;(88;4($?34;48)4$;161;:188;$?;
"But," said I, returning him the slip, "I am as much in the dark as
ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda awaiting me upon my solution of
this enigma, I am quite sure that I should be unable to earn them."
"And yet," said Legrand, "the solution is by no means so difficult as
you might be led to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the
characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a
cipher,--that is to say, they convey a meaning; but then, from what is
known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of
the more abstruse cryptographs. I made up my mind, at once, that this
was of a simple species,--such, however, as would appear, to the crude
intellect of the sailor, absolutely insoluble without the key."
"And you really solved it?"
"Readily; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times
greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take
interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human
ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may
not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having once established
connected and legible characters, I scarcely gave a thought to the mere
difficulty of developing their import.
"In the present case--indeed in all cases of secret writing--the first
question regards the _language_ of the cipher; for the principles of
solution, so far, especially, as the more simple ciphers are concerned,
depend upon, and are varied by, the genius of the particular idiom. In
general, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by
probabilities), of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution,
until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all
difficulty was removed by the signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd'
is appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this
consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and
French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most
naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish main. As it was,
I assumed the cryptograph to be English.
"You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had there been
divisions, the task would have been comparatively easy. In such case I
should have commenced with a collation and analysis of the shorter
words, and, had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely
(_a_ or _I_, for example), I should have considered the solution as
assured. But, there being no division, my first step was to ascertain
the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent. Counting all, I
constructed a table, thus:
Of the character 8 there are 33.
; " 26.
4 " 19.
$ ) " 16.
* " 13.
5 " 12.
6 " 11.
+ 1 " 8.
0 " 6.
9 2 " 5.
: 3 " 4.
? " 3.
¶ " 2.
-- . " 1.
"Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is _e_.
Afterwards, the succession runs thus: _a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m
w b k p q x z_. _E_ predominates so remarkably that an individual
sentence of any length is rarely seen, in which it is not the
prevailing character.
"Here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for
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,'
'agree,' etc. 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.' Upon
inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the
characters being ;48. We may, therefore, assume that ; represents _t_,
4 represents _h_, and 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 ; 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.'
"It is now time that we arrange our key, as far as discovered, in a
tabular form, to avoid confusion. 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 forty-one
degrees and thirteen minutes northeast 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 manuscript in the present instance, you will easily
detect five such cases of unusual crowding. Acting upon this hint, I
made the division thus:--
"'_A good glass in the Bishop's hostel in the Devil's seat--forty-one
degrees and thirteen minutes--northeast 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 upon 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 manuscript, and now I seemed to grasp the full secret.
"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, 'forty-one degrees and
thirteen minutes,' and 'northeast 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 to the ledge, and found that it was impossible to
retain a seat upon it except in one particular position. This fact
confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use the glass. Of
course, the 'forty-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, 'northeast 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
forty-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.
"Upon 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 upon 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 shot' (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."