“When you had gone, and when Jupiter was fast asleep, I betook myself 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 scarabaeus 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.  On 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, and then 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 on a seacoast, and not far from the boat was a parchment—­not a paper—­with a skull depicted on 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.”