THE TRANSLATION OF THE CRYPTOGRAM.

In obedience to the commands of Alvarez, two of the black-cloaked men seized Roger, each of them taking him by an arm, and led him back to the cell, whilst two more followed with the unconscious body of poor Harry.

When they arrived in the cell, the men who were carrying Harry’s body simply flung it down on the stone table with careless violence, and then, without glancing back, left the apartment, and, closing the door, locked and bolted it again on the outside.

Roger’s first thought was for his friend, whose head had been badly cut owing to the force with which he had been flung on the stone table.

He instinctively glanced round the cell, and his eyes fell upon the jug of water, which, with their food, had been placed there during their visit to the torture-chamber. With an exclamation of thankfulness he seized upon the jug, and, stripping off his doublet, tore away the sleeve of his undershirt; then, dipping that in the water, he bound it round the head of his friend over the jagged gash.

The sensation of cold produced by the soaking bandage restored Harry to consciousness, and, heaving a sigh, he opened his eyes; then memory returned, and he gave a great shudder as he remembered the awful scene upon which he had gazed but a short time since. His wandering eye caught sight of Roger’s familiar form; he called his friend to him, and Roger assisted him to his feet. Harry quickly recovered, but said that he felt rather sick and faint after what he had seen, and his head was aching rather badly.

“Oh, Roger, what fiends in human shape are those men!” he exclaimed. “They cut and slash and burn the living bodies of their fellow-men until they lose all semblance of human beings. Surely some judgment from heaven will some day fall upon them for committing such awful deeds!”

“Ay, doubtless it will; though not, perhaps, in this world,” answered Roger. “Now, if we could but find Mr Cavendish, let him know what is going on here, and march up with a hundred or two of our lads from the fleet, we would ourselves visit such a judgment upon them as would leave room for no other. But, Harry, I have somewhat to tell you, dear lad. After you had fainted at sight of poor de Soto, a man came in, recognised us both, and ordered us to be taken back here, as he would `require us both in the future’. That man was Alvarez! I see it all now. He suspects de Soto of possessing the cryptogram, and has tortured him to make him confess its whereabouts. De Soto, not having it, cannot say where it is. Now, you and I were on the Gloria del Mundo before she sank. I don’t know whether Alvarez saw you, but he did me the honour of desiring to slay me as I lay helpless before he left the ship. He was frustrated in his humane desire, however; but, knowing that I escaped after all from the Gloria, his suspicious mind will almost certainly jump to the conclusion that I have that paper, seeing that de Soto has persistently, and despite the most frightful tortures, evidently denied all knowledge of it. I can see that something of the kind is in his thoughts, because of his stringent commands for us to be `kept safe’, as he will `require us in the future’. So we know what to look forward to, my friend, if we cannot make our escape. The same sort of torture as that through which poor de Soto has just passed will be ours, God help us! Now, what counsel have you to offer under the circumstances?”

“Well, my friend,” answered Harry, “I should say that our best plan would be to endeavour to translate that cryptogram, commit its meaning to memory, and then destroy the paper. Then, if we are asked for it, we can say that we have it not, and allow them to search us as proof that what we say is true.

“Also, if Alvarez finds that the paper is really not in our hands, and if, in addition to that, we tell him that we know not where it is, perhaps we may avoid being tortured to make us confess its hiding-place; for I am sure that poor de Soto was tortured for no other reason than that Alvarez thought he had the cryptogram, and wished to make him confess where it is. That’s my advice to you, Roger; and the sooner we set about trying to translate that cipher the sooner we shall finish and be able to destroy it, and the safer we shall be. How fortunate it is that they have not decided to bore out that spy-hole again! We shall now be able to work at the paper without danger of being seen.”

“Let us, then, start on the matter at once,” replied Roger, “and, as our food has only recently been brought to us, we shall not be interrupted again for some hours, unless, of course, Alvarez should send for us; but I do not think he will want to question us to-day; he has not yet finished with that poor wretch de Soto. Now, Harry, just rip up the seam of my jerkin, and get that paper out, and let us start the business at once.”

Harry took out his knife, which, strangely enough, he had been permitted to retain, and, carefully cutting the stitches, removed the paper, unfolded it, and laid it open upon the stone table. Then both lads leant over the document and concentrated all their energies on the task before them.

“First of all,” said Roger, “what language is it most likely to be written in? Jose Leirya was himself a Spaniard, it is true; but from what I could gather from that man William Evans, about whom I told you, his crew was invariably made up for the most part of Englishmen; so it is reasonable to assume that English would be the language he would have to employ on board his ship. He had been sailing the high seas as a pirate for a good many years; so one would imagine that at the time when he wrote that cipher he would know probably more English than Spanish. What, therefore, more natural than that he should write his secret in English? At any rate, I think we should not be far wrong in assuming that it is written in English; and so we will take it for granted that such is the case. And if we find that we are wrong, we will try some other language say Spanish.

“But the language is not all-important; it is the finding what signs or letters those figures stand for that will be the difficulty. Now let us have a look at the paper. There is the first line of figures.

“1581. 2227 1819 1919 2622 1820 1335 1138 1918.

“Let us take that first, and see what we can make of it. I should say that the first number, standing, as it is, by itself, is the year in which it was written, that is to say, the year 1581. Now, you observe that these figures are all in groups of four. We will say that each figure represents a letter, which is not very likely, as not all the words could possibly consist of four letters each; but they might be the initial letters of certain words, giving sufficient of the word to enable one to guess the rest. Now there are 26 letters in the alphabet. Taking A as being 1, B as 2, C as 3, and so on up to Z as 26, let us apply this to the cipher.

“By doing this with the first group, we get B B B G, or, if we take the figures in groups of two V something else; but there is no letter corresponding to the number 27, so that hypothesis fails. Again, B B B G is no whole word, nor even the beginning of one; evidently, therefore, we are not right in that surmise.

“Now let us add together the first and second pair of figures in every group; for it is only by testing every possible combination of these exasperating figures that we shall arrive at their meaning. By doing this we get 4 and 9, which correspond to D and I. Now that looks more promising, so let us take the next group 1819. These, added, make 9 and 10, corresponding to I and J. This gives us D I I J. That again, Harry, does not seem to mean very much, does it?”

“No,” replied Harry, “it certainly does not. Still, let us go on; we may make something out of it yet. The next group is 1919, which makes 10 and 10 or J J; and the next group makes 8 and 4, or H and D.

“Now let us put all these together. By doing so, we get D I I J J H D, which certainly does not look like any language. We can make no words out of those letters, whichever way we arrange them, so it seems that we are wrong again in our method.”

“Never mind, my friend,” said Roger, “let us still go on; it will not do to be discouraged so soon. There certainly is some translation to that mass of figures, I feel certain, and I am determined to find it. Now, how can we go about it next? I have it! Let us take each group as representing one letter instead of two or four, as we did before. What shall we then get?

“We now have 13, 19, 20, 12, 11, 12, 13, 19 for our first line, representing, in letters, M S T L K L M S.

“This, again, conveys no meaning; nor can any words be formed whichever way we arrange the letters.

“Now, instead of adding each figure separately, let us add each set of two, that is, 22 and 27 and 18 and 19, then 19 and 19, and so on, and see what we get then.”

“But,” objected Harry, “if we do that, we shall get numbers which have no corresponding letters. I mean that by doing as you suggest we should have 49, 37, 38, and our numbers corresponding to letters only go up as far as 26, which stands for Z, so that method cannot be right. It seems to me that this thing is beyond us, Roger; I do not see what we can make of such an awful jumble of figures.”

“Gently, my lad, gently,” remonstrated Roger, “we will not give it up; we may as well be worrying over this cryptogram as doing nothing, and better, because it helps to pass the time, and keeps our thoughts from from other things,” he ended rather lamely.

For a few moments they remained silent and cogitating. Do what they would to distract their minds from dwelling upon that ghastly scene in the torture-chamber, the picture was constantly intruding itself upon their imaginations; nor could they forget the ominous words of Alvarez when he instructed the guard to keep them safely, as he would “require them in the future.”

But, after some little time spent in this dreary form of reverie, Roger started up once more.

“Come, Harry,” said he, “it is of no use for us to give way to these miserable forebodings; let us get back to the cipher again. It will keep us from thinking; and, besides, we may not have another such favourable opportunity in the future.”

Harry did not reply, but dismissed his gloomy thoughts, though evidently with an effort, and once again the two leant over their precious paper and cudgelled their brains in the effort to find the proper translation.

“Now,” resumed Roger, “it seems to me that we may possibly be on the correct track after all with our last grouping of the figures; that is to say, adding the first two and last two figures in each group to one another, and getting a certain number. It looks to me more likely than any of the other methods we tried.”

“I confess that I am unable to see it,” answered Harry. “We have already ascertained that by that method we get, first of all, the numbers 49, 37, and 38, and, as I remarked, we have no letters corresponding to those numbers.”

“No, I agree with you there,” replied Roger. “But how are we to know that Jose selected the number 1 for his letter A, 2 for the letter B, and so on? It is not very likely that he would, as that method of procedure would make the solving of the cipher a fairly easy matter, and we should have translated it by now. It is much more likely that he took some other number for his letter A, say 15, or 40, or any number rather than 1.”

Harry retorted: “Well, in that case we are just as far off the solution as at first, for how can we possibly tell, except by experiment, what numbers correspond to the right letters? And it would take us weeks to discover it by that method.”

“I agree with you that we certainly should be a very considerable time in arriving at the solution if we tried to do it simply by experiment,” said Roger. “But I do not propose to set about it in that way. Now think, Harry, what letter occurs most frequently in the English tongue.”

“Well,” replied his friend, “I have never given any thought to the matter, so I couldn’t say immediately; but I should say that the letter A occurs as often as any.”

“It certainly does often occur, as you say,” agreed Roger; “but the letter E occurs more often than any other letter, and, knowing that, I am going to look for the number that occurs most often in the cipher, and I feel sure that that number will be found to correspond to the letter E, provided always, of course, that this cryptogram is written in English.”

“Bravo, Roger,” shouted Harry; “well thought of! Now, I should never have hit upon that method if I had been worrying at this thing for ever.”

“S-s-sh !” Roger whispered. “Be quiet, man; do you want to bring those spies and jailers upon us? For you assuredly will, if you make much of that row.”

“I am sorry,” said Harry. “For the moment I had forgotten where we were, and I felt so sure that you had hit upon the right method of translating the cipher that I shouted without thinking.”

Roger interrupted his friend: “Do not speak for a few moments. Even then I thought I caught the sound of some person outside the door; I pray Heaven that they may not come into the cell!”

The two listened most intently for some minutes, with their ears pressed up against the wall and door, but caught no sound from outside. So, after waiting a little time longer, to make perfectly certain, they both returned to the task in hand.

“Now let us go on where we left off just now,” Harry suggested. “You say that we want to find out the number that occurs most often in the cryptogram, and allow that to represent E.”

“That is so,” replied Roger. “Now, let us have a look through it again.”

They both counted up, and presently Harry, who had finished first, exclaimed this time in a carefully lowered voice:

“Well, the number 34 occurs oftener than any other; that is, if you are adding the first two and last two figures of each group together.”

“Wait a moment,” said Roger, still busily counting. Then, after a pause, he added:

“Yes, you are right, Harry; the number 34 does occur most frequently; and we can, I am sure, take it as representing the letter E. Now, going upon that assumption, A will be represented by 30, B by 31, C by 32, D by 33, and so on. Now I believe that we have the translation in our own hands. Let us make the experiment but we ought to write it down as we go along, or else we shall forget part of it perhaps.”

“Ay, there is the difficulty,” said Harry; “we have no writing materials and nothing which we can use instead of them.”

“Not so fast, not so fast, lad,” his friend replied. “That is a difficulty which we must find means to overcome. Let us have a look round, and first see if there is anything that we can use for a pen. If we can find such a thing, the ink will be an easy matter afterwards.”

“Indeed?” exclaimed Harry incredulously. “I pray you explain how in the world you are going to get a supply of ink?”

“Never mind,” retorted Roger with a quiet smile; “you leave that to me. Get me something that will serve for a pen, and I will find the ink quickly enough.”

Seeing that Roger was not going to divulge the secret of the ink, Harry joined him in a search of the cell, looking for something that would answer the purpose.

Just at that moment there was a “click”, and, turning quickly round, they perceived that another meal had been pushed in through the trap-door.

“We will leave that for a time,” said Roger, intent upon his search. “The food can wait; but we cannot delay with what we are now doing; for we can never know when we may be interrupted.”

Harry agreed, and the search proceeded without very conspicuous success. A few fragments of straw, a quantity of woolly dust, a few tiny splinters of wood, and a small and extremely rusty nail were all that rewarded them.

“Ah!” ejaculated Harry, “I had forgotten that window-sill; there is more likely to be something in that accumulation of stuff up there than in the cell itself. Come and stand below it, so that I can mount on your shoulders, Roger; and then I can rake about there and see if I can find anything for our purpose.

“And, now that I come to think of it, we have never yet had a look out of that window. We can only see those high walls; there may be something to interest us below there, in the courtyard, or whatever it may be.”

Roger moved quickly to the other end of the cell, and, standing below the grated opening, allowed Harry to clamber up his body and finally to stand upon his shoulders.

Harry then grasped the bars of the grating, to take some of the pressure off his friend’s back, and began to burrow in the heap of dust and rubbish that had accumulated for years upon years on the sill. Suddenly Roger heard his name whispered softly “Roger, Roger, Roger”, and became aware of the fact that Harry was hurriedly preparing to descend from his perch. Roger eased his friend to the floor, and then asked what was the matter.

“Why,” said Harry, “there is a man below who appears to be waiting there for some definite purpose; and when he saw me at the window he began to make signs, which, unfortunately, I could not understand; and then held out his hands, as though to catch something he expected me to throw out. I cannot make out at all what it is he wants; you had better have a look, Roger.”

“Yes,” answered Roger, “let me get on your shoulders at once, Harry; this may be an important matter. Perchance it may be someone who is willing to help us to escape, and wishes to communicate with us.”

Harry immediately helped his chum up to his own former position. Roger stood there for some considerable time, looking out, and then whispered to Harry to let him descend.

“Well, did you see him?” enquired Harry, when Roger had got down.

“Yes,” replied Roger. “I just caught a glimpse of him as he vanished. He seemed to be a ragged sort of fellow, so far as I could make out. I wish he had remained a little longer; but I suspect that something must have alarmed him, and so caused him to move away. I wonder what it is he wanted! Are you certain that it was to you he was making those signs?”

“Quite certain,” Harry answered. “He was looking directly at me; and when he saw that I had noticed him, he, as I said, held out his hands so as though to catch something that I was to throw out. But what could he have wanted us to give him? There is nothing in this cell which we could fling to him, except our meal, which, by the way, we have not yet touched. I wonder if he expected us to write anything, and throw it out to him!”

“I don’t see how he could expect that,” said Roger. “If we had not chanced to look out, we should never have been aware that he was there; so why should we have anything to write to an individual of whose existence we were unaware until a few moments ago?”

“True,” responded Harry. “I cannot make it out at all. Did you notice which way he went?”

“Yes,” answered Roger, “I did notice that. You know that the court below is enclosed by those four walls of the building? Well, there is a small gateway on the right-hand side looking from here, in the wall directly opposite, and I was just in time to see him vanish through that. It may be that he will return again, however. If it is really some person who is anxious to assist us to escape and I cannot imagine that it would be any other he will be sure to come back as soon as it is safe for him to do so. But I must confess that I cannot understand why he seemed to be waiting for a message. If he had been trying to get a paper or message to us it would have been a different matter; for the first arrangements for escape must come from outside, and not from us. We could do nothing without first learning what arrangements can be made by our supposititious friend outside. Left to ourselves, we can contrive no plan of escape. But the man has disappeared for the time being, and we can do naught until we get into communication with him, so let us get on with that cipher. I have found something that will do nicely for a pen. While I was standing on your shoulders, and after the mysterious man had gone, I had a look among that stuff on the window-sill, and was lucky enough to find this feather. It has been a long time there, judging by its appearance, and must have been dropped by some bird which by this time is doubtless dead. I should say that some other prisoner was once in the habit of feeding birds from this grating; and probably it was one of them that dropped this feather, which will be of so much service to us. We can cut it into a pen, and I will now tell you where we can find our ink. Just take this knife of yours, make a small cut in my arm, and there is plenty of ink for us, although it is red; but that does not matter.”

With the knife Roger then carefully trimmed the quill of the small feather down into a fairly effective pen, and then turned his attention once more to the cipher.

Harry, who for some time past had been feeling the pangs of hunger rather severely, remonstrated with his friend.

“Look here, Roger,” said he, “let us eat our dinner before going on with that translation. I am feeling very hungry.”

“No, my friend,” replied Roger, “there is no time like the present. For aught we know we may never have another opportunity to work on this cryptogram. Our food can wait, and we shall relish it the more when we have time to eat it; but let us get finished with this matter first.”

Harry saw the wisdom of his chum’s remark, and, casting one more longing glance at the food, rejoined Roger at the stone table, and both lads began to pore over the paper again.

“Now,” remarked Roger, “you will notice that the lines of figures are far enough apart to allow us to write the letters corresponding to each group of them directly underneath, and that will be a great help to us; but we will write nothing until we are quite certain that we have hit upon the correct method of solving this cryptogram.

“You will remember, Harry, that by going over all the figures, we deduced that the number 34 represented the letter E. You will notice that this number, 34, is made up of many different groups of two figures, such as 17 and 17, 14 and 20, 12 and 22, 16 and 18, 15 and 19, 13 and 21, and so forth; but that, I fancy, is only done to make the solving of the cipher more difficult. Now, assuming the letter A to be 30, B to be 31, C to be 32, D to be 33, E, as we have reckoned, 34, let us apply this method to the figures and see what we get.

“We have already surmised that the number 1581 stands for no particular letter, but is really what it seems most likely to be, that is, the year in which this cryptogram was invented and written. Besides which, 15 and 81 added, according to the system we are now employing, would make 96, a number which has no letter corresponding to it.

“Now take the first group of figures, which is 2227. Divided into two groups of two figures each, and added to one another, as we intend to proceed, this makes 49. Now what letter corresponds to the number 49? We find that the letter I does. Take the next group, which is 1819. This resolves itself into 37, and H is the letter belonging to that figure. From 1919 we get 38, and the letter I; and from 2622 comes 48, and the letter S. Now you see, Harry, that by this method we have already got the English word `This’; and from that it would seem that we are at last on the right track for translating the cryptogram. From the next two groups we get the word `is’, and from the following three the word `the’. I think now, Harry, that we may begin and write down the translation as we go along; for I feel sure that we are right at last. It would be more than mere coincidence if the words `This is the’ were not part of a connected and intelligible whole. So just hand me that knife, Harry, boy, and I will produce the necessary ink.”

Harry did as he was requested; and, taking the weapon, Roger made a small but sufficiently deep incision in his left arm to produce the necessary amount of blood for their “ink”. Dipping the improvised pen in his own blood, Roger began to write under the groups of figures the letters which corresponded to them; and, prompted by Harry, it was not long ere he had the whole translation written down. And when this was completed he wiped the blood off his arm, and hid the pen in the lining of his jerkin. Then with much satisfaction he read out the true meaning of the cryptogram which he had held for so long a time in his possession, and which Alvarez would have sold his soul to secure. It ran as follows:

1581.

This is the key to the Treasure of me, Jose Leirya. This Treasure which is “`of’ is here understood, I suppose,” put in Roger great worth is of jewels most part of much price, taken by me in the South Seas. Many emeralds I took from a Prince of Méjico. Much gold also, buried deep hole under stone. Iron ring cave lonely inlet 75 degrees wes degrees north. North-East end island Cuba. Stone 14 paces mouth 5 paces right wall entering.

“There!” said Roger in tones of exultation; “what do you say to my method now, Harry? We now have the treasure in our power, or rather when we get free once more.”

“Yes,” agreed Harry, “always providing that someone else has not got there before us.”

“Which is not at all likely,” answered Roger. “We are almost certain that this and the other are the only two copies of the cryptogram now in existence, and, as soon as we have learned by heart its translation, we will destroy the papers; and then nobody will ever come at it except by accident, which is most unlikely. Why, Harry!” he continued in excited tones; “lonely inlet must mean that very identical bay where we careened the ships, and where the savages attacked us. Just imagine, we may actually have walked over the spot where the treasure lies buried; you see it says `hole under stone iron ring cave’. It may have been the very cave that we were in when the natives besieged us, and we were rescued by the sailors. But I saw no iron ring anywhere in it; did you, Harry?”

“No,” answered Harry, “I did not. But that stands for nothing, for there might have been a hundred stones and iron rings in that very cave on that occasion, and we should never have noticed them; we were otherwise much too fully occupied,” he concluded with a smile.

“I remember now,” continued Roger, “that old Cary told me a yarn about Jose Leirya you, too, were present by the way that night after we reached the bay; and he said that the pirate was known to have frequented those parts, and was supposed to have hidden some of his treasure somewhere about there. I thought it was only an old sailor’s yarn at the time, I remember; but it seems to have been perfectly true.”

“Yes,” agreed Harry; “but I should not reckon on this treasure too much if I were you, Roger; remember we are in prison it may be for the rest of our lives, unless that mysterious man we saw just now should really be a friend who wishes to assist us to escape. Besides, I am sure that Alvarez has a suspicion that we know something about the paper, and I cannot forget the sinister meaning of his words when he said that he would require us later. I know only too well what will happen when that time comes; and if he should treat us as he did poor de Soto well, we should never touch that hoard, Roger.”

“Heaven preserve us both from a fate like that!” Roger ejaculated. “I would give up every hope of securing that wealth to avoid being tortured as he was. But I would not let Alvarez know where it is, even to save myself from all the agonies he could inflict upon me. I would endure even death rather than tell that villain, that cruel, inhuman scoundrel, where the treasure is; for I know quite well how he would use any money he might be able to lay his hands upon. But I won’t talk about it. No, whatever may happen, Alvarez shall never know through me. What say you, Harry?”

“I am with you there, Roger,” the lad replied. “I, too, swear that I will never divulge the secret to Alvarez, whatever he may do. But excuse me, my friend; you said that, after the business with the paper had been got through with, we would have our dinner; and, as I said once before, I am hungry, so come let us fall to.”

“Wait one moment,” said Roger. “Do you think you know that translation by heart thoroughly; for I have committed it to memory, and if you have done the same we will destroy it, as it is much too dangerous a document to keep about us, now that we have incurred the suspicion of that fiend, Alvarez.”

“Yes,” answered Harry, “I know it perfectly;” and he repeated it to his friend. The paper was then at once torn up into the most minute particles. They were on the point of throwing them out of the window, but refrained, not so much because of the danger that they might be pieced together again, as that they might attract the attention of anybody who chanced to be about at the time. After a while, however, they found a deep crack between the cell wall and the floor, partly concealed by slime and dirt; and into this crack they pushed the remnants of the cryptogram, and then hid the small aperture again by covering it with more dirt scraped from the cell floor. Thus hidden it was exceedingly unlikely that anybody would ever find the pieces unless the exact spot was pointed out to him.

The two lads then turned with much lightened hearts to their meal. It was placed upon the stone table, and they began to share it between them. There was a bunch of bananas this time, a delicacy they had received but once before. Roger took them up to count and divide the fruit, when he exclaimed: “Why, whatever is this?”

“What?” asked Harry.

“Look at this,” rejoined Roger, holding something in his fingers. It was a piece of paper which had been skilfully hidden in the fruit, and on it a few lines of writing were to be seen.