Chapter 12
THE SOLUTION OF THE CRYPTOGRAM.
I was at this time no nearer to the unriddling of Richard Saint Leger's cryptogram than I had been at the moment when I held it in my hand for the first time; but now that I was so far on my way toward the spot where the treasure was supposed to still lie hidden, I resolved that I would not return until I had succeeded in deciphering the document and testing the truth of whatever statement it might be found to contain. I had a shrewd suspicion that the hiding-place of the treasure would prove to be in one of the thousand islets of the vast Pacific; and I accordingly determined to confine my operations to those waters until I had some good reason for going elsewhere. Our hatches were consequently no sooner off than I set about inquiring for freights to one or another of the Pacific ports. I speedily discovered that the most advantageous freights offering were for Australia; and, it having leaked out that the little _Esmeralda_ was something of a clipper, I succeeded, ere we had been in the river a week, in obtaining an excellent freight for Sydney, with the promise of quick despatch.
This matter arranged to my satisfaction, I had a little leisure on my hands; and the first use I made of it was to call upon the Desmonds at their hotel, in fulfilment of a promise extracted from me by them when they were leaving the ship. I found them just about to sit down to luncheon, at which meal they insisted that I should join them; and we had no sooner settled ourselves at the table than I was pelted with questions as to what I had been doing with myself since our parting; why had I not called before? had I decided upon my future movements? etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I replied by enumerating a few of the infinitude of business matters that a shipmaster usually has to attend to immediately upon his arrival in port--especially if that port be a foreign one--and, in conclusion, told them that, having resolved to remain in Eastern waters until I should have either discovered the interpretation of my ancestor's cryptogram, or should be driven to abandon all hope of ever solving the riddle, I had accepted a freight for Sydney, New South Wales; jestingly adding that they had better make up their minds to take passage with me.
As I said this I observed a quick interchange of glances between Sir Edgar, his wife, and Miss Merrivale; and then the former remarked--
"Well now, captain, it is very singular, but it is nevertheless a fact, that no longer ago than this morning at breakfast we practically made up our minds that, before returning home, we would go on to Australia, and see something of that wonderful country. An old friend and college chum of mine has settled there and gone in for sheep-farming upon a large scale, and, our conversation happening to turn upon him a few days ago, my wife made the curious discovery that he is the man who married the bosom friend and companion of her boarding-school days; the result being that a half jocular proposal of mine that we should extend our wanderings to Australia and beat up the quarters of these good folk has crystallised into the serious resolution to do so, provided that suitable passenger accommodation to take us there can be met with. This accident of your having accepted a freight for Sydney settles that part of the question, of course, for we will go with you--that is, if you are willing to have us again."
I protested, heartily and truthfully, that no proposal could give me greater pleasure. Whereupon it was then and there arranged that the party should have the whole of the saloon accommodation as before; and ere I left them that afternoon, Sir Edgar--asking me to roughly calculate for him the probable date of our arrival--sat down and wrote to his friend, apprising him of the determination arrived at, and naming the approximate date at which the party might be looked for.
This arrangement was a most agreeable, as well as a most advantageous one for me; for it at once insured me the disposal of all my saloon accommodation for the passage, and, at the same time, the continued society of those who had already not only proved themselves to be most agreeable, companionable people, but whom I had by this time learned to regard as staunch personal friends.
Nothing worthy of mention occurred to mark our sojourn in the Canton river; I need, therefore, only state that, having duly discharged our inward cargo, and received our outward freight, we sailed for Sydney on the day three weeks following the date of the arrangement come to by Sir Edgar and his party to take passage in the _Esmeralda_.
The passage proved as uneventful as the previous one had been the reverse; only two incidents occurring during its progress of sufficient moment to demand especial mention. At the time of their occurrence I considered only one of them worth the distinction of an entry in my diary; but subsequent events proved that they were both destined to exercise almost equally important influences upon my fortunes and those of my friends the Desmond party.
The first--and what seemed to me infinitely the most important--of these was nothing less than my discovery of the long-sought key to Richard Saint Leger's secret cipher; and it was brought about in a manner so singular and unexpected that I must leave the explanation of the matter to the psychological student, it being altogether beyond the comprehension of such a simple, matter-of-fact, unlearned seaman as myself.
It happened thus. I fully realised that it would be impossible for me to continue cruising to and fro in those Eastern waters for an indefinite period; I knew that a moment must sooner or later arrive when the force of circumstances would compel me to shape a course once more for England; and it already appeared to me highly probable that the arrival of that moment would prove to be coincident with that of the arrival of the ship in Sydney Harbour. I consequently became increasingly anxious to discover the interpretation of the cryptogram before the conclusion of the passage upon which we were then engaged. No sooner, therefore, were we fairly at sea than I devoted myself in grim and serious earnest to my quest for the key that was to unlock the secrets of the exasperating cipher. The document consisted, as the reader will remember, entirely of long, unbroken rows of figures--with the exception of a rather singular sketch in the midst of the text, which I took to be a representation of the island whereon the treasure was said to have been secreted, as viewed from certain bearings--and I knew that these figures must stand in lieu of a certain arrangement of the letters of the alphabet, forming words. I had early noted the somewhat curious fact that there was but one solitary nought throughout the document; but that only helped me so far as to render me morally certain that the letters of the text could scarcely be represented by units; and, taking this as my initial theory, I attempted every other combination of numbers that either my ingenuity or my fancy could suggest. In vain; I could hit upon no arrangement of numbers that, when transposed into letters, would give me a single intelligible word, either in English or any other language with which I had the slightest acquaintance. I at length grew so thoroughly worried over the matter that my nerves became sensibly affected; I turned irritable, and began to suffer from repeated attacks of extreme anxiety and depression; my appetite failed me, and I became a victim to the torment of insomnia.
In this condition of mind and body I one night retired to my cabin after a day of petty worries, in which everything and everybody seemed to have been at cross-purposes with me, and--utterly worn out with the prolonged tension upon my nerves--ultimately subsided into a fitful, restless, nightmare kind of slumber, during which I continued in my dreams the researches upon which my thoughts had now been for nearly three weeks concentrated. Over and over again did I seem to arrange upon paper an experimental system of numbering the alphabet, in the hope of obtaining some intelligible result; and at length, to my great astonishment and inexpressible delight, methought I found one. In feverish haste I-- still in my dream--set to work upon the translation of the document, and was progressing swimmingly, when a sharp rapping upon my state-room door, and the steward's voice announcing, "Six bells, sir," (the time at which I was regularly called every morning), awoke me; and in that same instant I lost all recollection of every particular of my dream, remembering only that in it I really seemed to have at last found the solution of the hitherto inexplicable enigma.
Seriously annoyed at so inopportune an interruption to a dream that I quite regarded as a revelation, and vexed at my inability to recollect any more of the process of translation which I had followed than that it was an entirely novel one, I took my usual salt-water bath, dressed, and in due course sat down to breakfast, all the while striving desperately but unsuccessfully to recall the lost clue. My passengers observed my preoccupation, and endeavoured--for some time unavailingly--to withdraw me from it; at length, however, the consciousness dawned upon me that my peculiar behaviour must appear to them decidedly discourteous. I therefore aroused myself, threw off my abstraction, and apologised; explaining that I had been endeavouring to recall the details of a dream in which I seemed to have discovered the long-sought key to the secret of my hidden treasure.
"A dream!" exclaimed Miss Merrivale, delighted. "Oh, captain, _pray_ tell us all about it; it may help you to remember."
I had no such hope, having already racked my brain until it seemed to reel, and all to no purpose; but it would have been childish to have refused the request. I therefore began by telling them how that I had retired on the preceding night with my mind full of the subject; how I had lain tossing restlessly, hour after hour, striving to think out some arrangement or system that I had not yet tried; and how eventually I had sunk into a feverish, nightmare slumber in which my brain continued its arduous, painful search for the key of the problem.
"At length," continued I, "an idea came to me; and, taking a sheet of paper, I--I--Why, by all that is wonderful, _I have it again_!"
And, springing from my chair, to the no small consternation of my companions, who evidently thought I had suddenly gone demented, I rushed away to my state-room and, seizing a sheet of paper, jotted down the system that had just recurred to my memory. Then, heedless of my unfinished breakfast and everything else, I drew out the precious document itself, and, using the key that had come to me in such an extraordinary manner, soon discovered, to my inexpressible delight, that I really was at last upon the right track. I met with a few difficulties, it was true; but, braced-up and encouraged by what I had already achieved, I speedily surmounted them, and, after somewhat more than an hour's patient labour, succeeded in evolving the following:--
"Latitude 3 degrees 40 minutes South; longitude 139 degrees 18 minutes West. Approached from the south-west the island, at a distance of fifteen leagues, bears the exact likeness of the face of a man floating on the water. Steer for the hollow between mouth and chin, and ye shall find a river, which boldly enter, and sail up it a distance of three furlongs to the creek on starboard hand; pass into the creek and land on the island. The treasure lies buried at a spot one thousand feet due south from the base of the obelisk rock."
I was so elated at this discovery, the mental relief and exhilaration were so great that, in the exuberance of my delight, I felt constrained to acquaint my friends with my success; and rushing up on the poop with the cryptogram and its rough translation in my hand, I sat down by the open skylight, close to which Sir Edgar and Lady Emily were seated, and presenting the baronet with the documents, said--
"There, Sir Edgar, read that; and never hereafter dare to assert that there is nothing in dreams!"
"I do not remember that I have ever yet made the assertion," he retorted laughingly. "But do you really mean to say that you have at length mastered the secret of the cipher?" as he took the paper from me, and forthwith read it aloud for the benefit of his wife and Miss Merrivale, the latter having joined us at her sister's call.
"Well," exclaimed Lady Emily, when her husband had finished, "it is really wonderful! quite the kind of thing that one reads of in books but does not believe, because one seldom or never meets with anything like it in real life. But so many strange things have happened during this eventful voyage of ours, that I shall never again be incredulous of anything."
"Quite so, my dear," agreed Sir Edgar. "Never commit yourself to the statement that you disbelieve anything. To refuse credence simply because one cannot understand, or because to our limited understanding the occurrence seems unlikely or impossible, is an infallible indication of ignorance. The wider our experience, and the deeper our knowledge, the more ready are we to admit that there may be many wonders that have never come within the limits of our ken, and about which we know nothing. But, about the key to the cryptogram, what is it? You must tell us that, you know, Saint Leger, in consideration of our own unsuccessful efforts to help you. Besides, the knowledge of such a difficult cipher as that is really worth having; who can say how soon, or under what circumstances, it might be found useful for purposes of secret communication?"
"Oh, it is ridiculously simple, when you know it," said I. "All you have to do is to number each letter of the alphabet consecutively, beginning with A and calling it eleven. Then, with the cryptogram before you, you divide the figures into series of four, each four figures representing a letter. Subtract the first pair of figures from the second, and the remainder gives you the number of the letter as you have it in your key. For example: the first four figures in the document are 1133; that is to say, eleven and thirty-three. The difference between them is twenty-two, which, you see, represents the