“Never.”

“But that Kidd’s accumulations were immense is well known.  I took it for granted, therefore, that the earth still held them; and you will scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found involved a lost record of the place of deposit.”

“But how did you proceed?”

“I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat, but nothing appeared.  I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt might have something to do with the failure; so I carefully rinsed the parchment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, I placed it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards, and put the pan upon a furnace of lighted charcoal.  In a few minutes, the pan having become thoroughly heated, I removed the slip, and, to my inexpressible joy, found it spotted, in several places, with what appeared to be figures arranged in lines.  Again I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to remain another minute.  Upon taking it off, the whole was just as you see it now.”

Here, Legrand, having reheated 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:—­

53$$+305))6*;4826)4$.)4$);806*;48+860))85;;]8*;:$*8+83(88
)5*+; 46(;88*96*?;8)*$(:485);5*+2:*$(;4956*2(5*—­4)88*;4
069285);)6+8)4 $$;1($9;48081;8:8$1;48+85;4)485+528806*81($9;48;(88;4($?34;4
8)4$ ;161;:188;$?;

“But,” said I, returning him the slip, “I am as much in the dark as ever.  Were all the jewels of Golconda awaiting me on 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.