Across the Spanish Main: A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess

by Harry Collingwood

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

  THE TRANSLATION OF THE CRYPTOGRAM.

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

  When they arrived in the cell, the men who were carrying Harry's bodysimply flung it down on the stone table with careless violence, andthen, 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 cutowing 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 jugof water, which, with their food, had been placed there during theirvisit to the torture-chamber. With an exclamation of thankfulness heseized upon the jug, and, stripping off his doublet, tore away thesleeve of his undershirt; then, dipping that in the water, he bound itround the head of his friend over the jagged gash.

  The sensation of cold produced by the soaking bandage restored Harry toconsciousness, and, heaving a sigh, he opened his eyes; then memoryreturned, and he gave a great shudder as he remembered the awful sceneupon which he had gazed but a short time since. His wandering eyecaught sight of Roger's familiar form; he called his friend to him, andRoger assisted him to his feet. Harry quickly recovered, but said thathe felt rather sick and faint after what he had seen, and his head wasaching 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 untilthey lose all semblance of human beings. Surely some judgment fromheaven will some day fall upon them for committing such awful deeds!"

  "Ay, doubtless it will; though not, perhaps, in this world," answeredRoger. "Now, if we could but find Mr Cavendish, let him know what isgoing on here, and march up with a hundred or two of our lads from thefleet, we would ourselves visit such a judgment upon them as would leaveroom 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 allnow. He suspects de Soto of possessing the cryptogram, and has torturedhim to make him confess its whereabouts. De Soto, not having it, cannotsay where it is. Now, you and I were on the _Gloria del Mundo_ beforeshe sank. I don't know whether Alvarez saw you, but he did me thehonour 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 Iescaped after all from the _Gloria_, his suspicious mind will almostcertainly jump to the conclusion that I have that paper, seeing that deSoto has persistently, and despite the most frightful tortures,evidently denied all knowledge of it. I can see that something of thekind 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 tolook forward to, my friend, if we cannot make our escape. The same sortof torture as that through which poor de Soto has just passed will beours, God help us! Now, what counsel have you to offer under thecircumstances?"

  "Well, my friend," answered Harry, "I should say that our best planwould be to endeavour to translate that cryptogram, commit its meaningto memory, and then destroy the paper. Then, if we are asked for it, wecan say that we have it not, and allow them to search us as proof thatwhat we say is true.

  "Also, if Alvarez finds that the paper is really not in our hands, andif, 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 thanthat Alvarez thought he had the cryptogram, and wished to make himconfess where it is. That's my advice to you, Roger; and the sooner weset about trying to translate that cipher the sooner we shall finish andbe able to destroy it, and the safer we shall be. How fortunate it isthat they have not decided to bore out that spy-hole again! We shallnow 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 ourfood has only recently been brought to us, we shall not be interruptedagain for some hours, unless, of course, Alvarez should send for us; butI do not think he will want to question us to-day; he has not yetfinished with that poor wretch de Soto. Now, Harry, just rip up theseam of my jerkin, and get that paper out, and let us start the businessat once."

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

  "First of all," said Roger, "what language is it most likely to bewritten in? Jose Leirya was himself a Spaniard, it is true; but fromwhat 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 itis reasonable to assume that English would be the language he would haveto employ on board his ship. He had been sailing the high seas as apirate for a good many years; so one would imagine that at the time whenhe wrote that cipher he would know probably more English than Spanish.What, therefore, more natural than that he should write his secret inEnglish? At any rate, I think we should not be far wrong in assumingthat it is written in English; and so we will take it for granted thatsuch is the case. And if we find that we are wrong, we will try someother language--say Spanish.

  "But the language is not all-important; it is the finding what signs orletters those figures stand for that will be the difficulty. Now let ushave 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 saythat the first number, standing, as it is, by itself, is the year inwhich it was written, that is to say, the year 1581. Now, you observethat these figures are all in groups of four. We will say that eachfigure represents a letter, which is not very likely, as not all thewords could possibly consist of four letters each; but they might be theinitial letters of certain words, giving sufficient of the word toenable 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 usapply this to the cipher.

  "By doing this with the first group, we get B B B G, or, if we take thefigures in groups of two--V--something else; but there is no lettercorresponding to the number 27, so that hypothesis fails. Again, B B BG 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 everygroup; for it is only by testing every possible combination of theseexasperating figures that we shall arrive at their meaning. By doingthis we get 4 and 9, which correspond to D and I. Now that looks morepromising, so let us take the next group 1819. These, added, make 9 and10, 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; wemay make something out of it yet. The next group is 1919, which makes10 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 wordsout of those letters, whichever way we arrange them, so it seems that weare wrong again in our method."

  "Never mind, my friend," said Roger, "let us still go on; it will not doto be discouraged so soon. There certainly is some translation to thatmass 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 asrepresenting one letter instead of two or four, as we did before. Whatshall 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 whicheverway we arrange the letters.

  "Now, instead of adding each figure separately, let us add each set oftwo, that is, 22 and 27 and 18 and 19, then 19 and 19, and so on, andsee what we get then."

  "But," objected Harry, "if we do that, we shall get numbers which haveno corresponding letters. I mean that by doing as you suggest we shouldhave 49, 37, 38, and our numbers corresponding to letters only go up asfar as 26, which stands for Z, so that method cannot be right. It seemsto me that this thing is beyond us, Roger; I do not see what we can makeof 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, andbetter, 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 theywould to distract their minds from dwelling upon that ghastly scene inthe torture-chamber, the picture was constantly intruding itself upontheir imaginations; nor could they forget the ominous words of Alvarezwhen he instructed the guard to keep them safely, as he would "requirethem in the future."

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

  "Come, Harry," said he, "it is of no use for us to give way to thesemiserable forebodings; let us get back to the cipher again. It willkeep us from thinking; and, besides, we may not have another suchfavourable opportunity in the future."

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

  "Now," resumed Roger, "it seems to me that we may possibly be on thecorrect track after all with our last grouping of the figures; that isto say, adding the first two and last two figures in each group to oneanother, and getting a certain number. It looks to me more likely thanany of the other methods we tried."

  "I confess that I am unable to see it," answered Harry. "We havealready ascertained that by that method we get, first of all, thenumbers 49, 37, and 38, and, as I remarked, we have no letterscorresponding to those numbers."

  "No, I agree with you there," replied Roger. "But how are we to knowthat 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 ofprocedure would make the solving of the cipher a fairly easy matter, andwe should have translated it by now. It is much more likely that hetook some other number for his letter A, say 15, or 40, or any numberrather than 1."

  Harry retorted: "Well, in that case we are just as far off the solutionas at first, for how can we possibly tell, except by experiment, whatnumbers correspond to the right letters? And it would take us weeks todiscover it by that method."

  "I agree with you that we certainly should be a very considerable timein 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. Nowthink, Harry, what letter occurs most frequently in the English tongue."

  "Well," replied his friend, "I have never given any thought to thematter, so I couldn't say immediately; but I should say that the letterA occurs as often as any."

  "It certainly does often occur, as you say," agreed Roger; "but theletter E occurs more often than any other letter, and, knowing that, Iam 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 theletter E, provided always, of course, that this cryptogram is written inEnglish."

  "Bravo, Roger," shouted Harry; "well thought of! Now, I should neverhave hit upon that method if I had been worrying at this thing forever."

  "S-s-sh--!" Roger whispered. "Be quiet, man; do you want to bringthose spies and jailers upon us? For you assuredly will, if you makemuch of that row."

  "I am sorry," said Harry. "For the moment I had forgotten where wewere, and I felt so sure that you had hit upon the right method oftranslating the cipher that I shouted without thinking."

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

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

  "Now let us go on where we left off just now," Harry suggested. "Yousay that we want to find out the number that occurs most often in thecryptogram, and allow that to represent E."

  "That is so," replied Roger. "Now, let us have a look through itagain."

  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 areadding the first two and last two figures of each group together."

  "Wait a moment," said Roger, still busily counting. Then, after apause, 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, goingupon that assumption, A will be represented by 30, B by 31, C by 32, Dby 33, and so on. Now I believe that we have the translation in our ownhands. Let us make the experiment--but we ought to write it down as wego along, or else we shall forget part of it perhaps."

  "Ay, there is the difficulty," said Harry; "we have no writing materialsand nothing which we can use instead of them."

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

  "Indeed?" exclaimed Harry incredulously. "I pray you explain how in theworld 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 inkquickly enough."

  Seeing that Roger was not going to divulge the secret of the ink, Harryjoined him in a search of the cell, looking for something that wouldanswer the purpose.

  Just at that moment there was a "click", and, turning quickly round,they perceived that another meal had been pushed in through thetrap-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; forwe 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 tinysplinters of wood, and a small and extremely rusty nail were all thatrewarded them.

  "Ah!" ejaculated Harry, "I had forgotten that window-sill; there is morelikely to be something in that accumulation of stuff up there than inthe cell itself. Come and stand below it, so that I can mount on yourshoulders, Roger; and then I can rake about there and see if I can findanything for our purpose.

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

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

  Harry then grasped the bars of the grating, to take some of the pressureoff his friend's back, and began to burrow in the heap of dust andrubbish that had accumulated for years upon years on the sill. SuddenlyRoger heard his name whispered softly--"Roger, Roger, Roger", and becameaware of the fact that Harry was hurriedly preparing to descend from hisperch. Roger eased his friend to the floor, and then ask
ed what was thematter.

  "Why," said Harry, "there is a man below who appears to be waiting therefor some definite purpose; and when he saw me at the window he began tomake signs, which, unfortunately, I could not understand; and then heldout 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 alook, 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 iswilling to help us to escape, and wishes to communicate with us."

  Harry immediately helped his chum up to his own former position. Rogerstood there for some considerable time, looking out, and then whisperedto 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. Iwish he had remained a little longer; but I suspect that something musthave alarmed him, and so caused him to move away. I wonder what it ishe wanted! Are you certain that it was to you he was making thosesigns?"

  "Quite certain," Harry answered. "He was looking directly at me; andwhen 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 whatcould he have wanted us to give him? There is nothing in this cellwhich we could fling to him, except our meal, which, by the way, we havenot yet touched. I wonder if he expected us to write anything, andthrow it out to him!"

  "I don't see how he could expect that," said Roger. "If we had notchanced 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 whoseexistence we were unaware until a few moments ago?"

  "True," responded Harry. "I cannot make it out at all. Did you noticewhich way he went?"

  "Yes," answered Roger, "I did notice that. You know that the courtbelow is enclosed by those four walls of the building? Well, there is asmall gateway on the right-hand side looking from here, in the walldirectly opposite, and I was just in time to see him vanish throughthat. It may be that he will return again, however. If it is reallysome person who is anxious to assist us to escape--and I cannot imaginethat it would be any other--he will be sure to come back as soon as itis safe for him to do so. But I must confess that I cannot understandwhy he seemed to be waiting for a message. If he had been trying to geta paper or message to us it would have been a different matter; for thefirst arrangements for escape must come from outside, and not from us.We could do nothing without first learning what arrangements can be madeby our supposititious friend outside. Left to ourselves, we cancontrive no plan of escape. But the man has disappeared for the timebeing, and we can do naught until we get into communication with him, solet us get on with that cipher. I have found something that will donicely for a pen. While I was standing on your shoulders, and after themysterious man had gone, I had a look among that stuff on thewindow-sill, and was lucky enough to find this feather. It has been along time there, judging by its appearance, and must have been droppedby some bird which by this time is doubtless dead. I should say thatsome other prisoner was once in the habit of feeding birds from thisgrating; 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 Iwill now tell you where we can find our ink. Just take this knife ofyours, 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 smallfeather down into a fairly effective pen, and then turned his attentiononce more to the cipher.

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

  "Look here, Roger," said he, "let us eat our dinner before going on withthat translation. I am feeling very hungry."

  "No, my friend," replied Roger, "there is no time like the present. Foraught we know we may never have another opportunity to work on thiscryptogram. Our food can wait, and we shall relish it the more when wehave 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 longingglance at the food, rejoined Roger at the stone table, and both ladsbegan to pore over the paper again.

  "Now," remarked Roger, "you will notice that the lines of figures arefar enough apart to allow us to write the letters corresponding to eachgroup 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 hitupon the correct method of solving this cryptogram.

  "You will remember, Harry, that by going over all the figures, wededuced that the number 34 represented the letter E. You will noticethat this number, 34, is made up of many different groups of twofigures, 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 thesolving of the cipher more difficult. Now, assuming the letter A to be30, B to be 31, C to be 32, D to be 33, E, as we have reckoned, 34, letus apply this method to the figures and see what we get.

  "We have already surmised that the number 1581 stands for no particularletter, but is really what it seems most likely to be, that is, the yearin which this cryptogram was invented and written. Besides which, 15and 81 added, according to the system we are now employing, would make96, a number which has no letter corresponding to it.

  "Now take the first group of figures, which is 2227. Divided into twogroups of two figures each, and added to one another, as we intend toproceed, 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 thatfigure. 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 havealready got the English word `This'; and from that it would seem that weare at last on the right track for translating the cryptogram. From thenext two groups we get the word `is', and from the following three theword `the'. I think now, Harry, that we may begin and write down thetranslation 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' werenot part of a connected and intelligible whole. So just hand me thatknife, Harry, boy, and I will produce the necessary ink."

  Harry did as he was requested; and, taking the weapon, Roger made asmall but sufficiently deep incision in his left arm to produce thenecessary amount of blood for their "ink". Dipping the improvised penin his own blood, Roger began to write under the groups of figures theletters which corresponded to them; and, prompted by Harry, it was notlong ere he had the whole translation written down. And when this wascompleted he wiped the blood off his arm, and hid the pen in the liningof his jerkin. Then with much satisfaction he read out the true meaningof the cryptogram which he had held for so long a time in hispossession, and which Alvarez would have sold his soul to secure. Itran as follows:--

  1581.

  This is the key to the Treasure of me, Jose Leirya. This Treasure whichis--"`of' is here understood, I suppose," put in Roger--great worth isof jewels most part of much price, taken by me in the South Seas. Manyemeralds I took from a Prince of Mejico. Much gold also, buried deephole under stone. Iron ring cave lonely inlet 75 degrees west. 20degrees north. North-East end island Cuba. Stone 14 paces mouth 5paces right wall entering.

  "There!" said Roger in tones of exultation; "what do you say to mymethod now, Harry? We now have the treasure in our power, or ratherwhen we get free once more."

  "Yes," agreed Harry, "always providing that someone else has not gotthere before us."

  "Which is not at all likely," answered Roger. "We are almost certainthat this and the other are the only two copies of the cryptogram now inexistence, and, as soon as we have learned by heart its translation, wewill destroy the papers; and then
nobody will ever come at it except byaccident, which is most unlikely. Why, Harry!" he continued in excitedtones; "lonely inlet must mean that very identical bay where we careenedthe ships, and where the savages attacked us. Just imagine, we mayactually have walked over the spot where the treasure lies buried; yousee it says `hole under stone iron ring cave'. It may have been thevery cave that we were in when the natives besieged us, and we wererescued 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, forthere might have been a hundred stones and iron rings in that very caveon that occasion, and we should never have noticed them; we wereotherwise much too fully occupied," he concluded with a smile.

  "I remember now," continued Roger, "that old Cary told me a yarn aboutJose Leirya--you, too, were present by the way--that night after wereached the bay; and he said that the pirate was known to havefrequented those parts, and was supposed to have hidden some of histreasure somewhere about there. I thought it was only an old sailor'syarn 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 muchif I were you, Roger; remember we are in prison--it may be for the restof our lives, unless that mysterious man we saw just now should reallybe a friend who wishes to assist us to escape. Besides, I am sure thatAlvarez has a suspicion that we know something about the paper, and Icannot forget the sinister meaning of his words when he said that hewould require us later. I know only too well what will happen when thattime comes; and if he should treat us as he did poor de Soto--well, weshould never touch that hoard, Roger."

  "Heaven preserve us both from a fate like that!" Roger ejaculated. "Iwould give up every hope of securing that wealth to avoid being torturedas he was. But I would not let Alvarez know where it is, even to savemyself from all the agonies he could inflict upon me. I would endureeven death rather than tell that villain, that cruel, inhuman scoundrel,where the treasure is; for I know quite well how he would use any moneyhe 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 Iwill never divulge the secret to Alvarez, whatever he may do. Butexcuse me, my friend; you said that, after the business with the paperhad been got through with, we would have our dinner; and, as I said oncebefore, I am hungry, so come let us fall to."

  "Wait one moment," said Roger. "Do you think you know that translationby heart thoroughly; for I have committed it to memory, and if you havedone the same we will destroy it, as it is much too dangerous a documentto 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 hisfriend. The paper was then at once torn up into the most minuteparticles. They were on the point of throwing them out of the window,but refrained, not so much because of the danger that they might bepieced together again, as that they might attract the attention ofanybody who chanced to be about at the time. After a while, however,they found a deep crack between the cell wall and the floor, partlyconcealed by slime and dirt; and into this crack they pushed theremnants of the cryptogram, and then hid the small aperture again bycovering it with more dirt scraped from the cell floor. Thus hidden itwas exceedingly unlikely that anybody would ever find the pieces unlessthe exact spot was pointed out to him.

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

  "What?" asked Harry.

  "Look at this," rejoined Roger, holding something in his fingers. Itwas a piece of paper which had been skilfully hidden in the fruit, andon it a few lines of writing were to be seen.