First I looked out in the book that text about the ‘days of our life’, and found that it was indeed in the ninetieth Psalm, but the tenth verse, just as Ratsey said, and not the twenty-first as it was writ on the parchment.  And then I took the second text, and here again the Psalm was given correct, but the verse was two, and not six, as my scribe had it.  It was just the same with the other three—­the number of the Psalm was right but the verse wrong.  So here was a discovery, for all was painfully written smooth and clean without a blot, and yet in every verse an error.  But if the second number did not stand for the verse, what else should it mean?  I had scarce formed the question to myself before I had the answer, and knew that it must be the number of the word chosen in each text to make a secret meaning.  I was in as great a fever and excitement now as when I found the locket in the Mohune vault, and could scarce count with trembling fingers as far as twenty-one, in the first verse, for hurry and amaze.  It was ‘fourscore’ that the number fell on in the first text, ‘feet’ in the second, ‘deep’ in the third, ‘well’ in the fourth, ‘north’ in the fifth.

Fourscore—­feet—­deep—­well—­north.

There was the cipher read, and what an easy trick! and yet I had not lighted on it all this while, nor ever should have, but for Sexton Ratsey and his burial verse.  It was a cunning plan of Blackbeard; but other folk were quite as cunning as he, and here was all his treasure at our feet.  I chuckled over that to myself, rubbing my hands, and read it through again: 

Fourscore—­feet—­deep—­well—­north.

’Twas all so simple, and the word in the fourth verse ‘well’ and not ‘vale’ or ‘pool’ as I had stuck at so often in trying to unriddle it.  How was it I had not guessed as much before? and here was something to tell Elzevir when he came back, that the clue was found to the cipher, and the secret out.  I would not reveal it all at once, but tease him by making him guess, and at last tell him everything, and we would set to work at once to make ourselves rich men.  And then I thought once more of Grace, and how the laugh would be on my side now, for all Master Ratsey’s banter about her being rich and me being poor!

Fourscore—­feet-deep—­well—­north.

I read it again, and somehow it was this time a little less dear, and I fell to thinking what it was exactly that I should tell Elzevir, and how we were to get to work to find the treasure.  ’Twas hid in a well—­that was plain enough, but in what well?—­and what did ‘north’ mean?  Was it the north well, or to north of the well—­or, was it fourscore feet north of the deep well?  I stared at the verses as if the ink would change colour and show some other sense, and then a veil seemed drawn across the writing, and the meaning to slip away, and be as far as ever from my grasp. Fourscore—­feet—­deep—­well—­north:  and by degrees exulting gladness gave way to bewilderment and disquiet of spirit, and in the gusts of wind I heard Blackbeard himself laughing and mocking me for thinking I had found his treasure.  Still I read and re-read it, juggling with the words and turning them about to squeeze new meaning from them.