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.) 4J);806*;48f8lIeo)) 85;; ] 8*;:  $*8f83(88)5*f;46(,- 88*9e*?;’S)*t(;485);5*f2:*t(;4956 2(5-4)8H8*;4oe9285);)ef8)4JJ;l (J9;48081;8:8Jl;48 f85;4) 485t5288oe*8l(|9;48;(88;4(J 134,48)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.

“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 on, 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 is 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 case 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: