A good glass in the bishop's hotel in the devil's seat forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes north-east side shoot from the left eye of the
death's-head a bee-line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.
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:
"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 cases 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.
+I " 8.
0 " 6.
92 " 5.
:3 " 4.
? " 3.
P " 2.
--. " 1.
"Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is e.
Afterward, 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 it
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 a
repetition 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
? " u
"We have, therefore, no less than eleven 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.'"
