Across the Spanish Main - Harry Collingwood (best novels for beginners TXT) 📗

so I couldn’t say immediately; but I should say that the letter A occurs as often as any.”

“It certainly does often occur, as you say,” agreed Roger; “but the letter E occurs more often than any other letter, and, knowing that, I am going to look for the number that occurs most often in the cipher, and I feel sure that that number will be found to correspond to the letter E, provided always, of course, that this cryptogram is written in English.”

“Bravo, Roger,” shouted Harry; “well thought of! Now, I should never have hit upon that method if I had been worrying at this thing for ever.”

“S-s-sh—!” Roger whispered. “Be quiet, man; do you want to bring those spies and jailers upon us? For you assuredly will, if you make much of that row.”

“I am sorry,” said Harry. “For the moment I had forgotten where we were, and I felt so sure that you had hit upon the right method of translating the cipher that I shouted without thinking.”

Roger interrupted his friend: “Do not speak for a few moments. Even then I thought I caught the sound of some person outside the door; I pray Heaven that they may not come into the cell!”

The two listened most intently for some minutes, with their ears pressed up against the wall and door, but caught no sound from outside. So, after waiting a little time longer, to make perfectly certain, they both returned to the task in hand.

“Now let us go on where we left off just now,” Harry suggested. “You say that we want to find out the number that occurs most often in the cryptogram, and allow that to represent E.”

“That is so,” replied Roger. “Now, let us have a look through it again.”

They both counted up, and presently Harry, who had finished first, exclaimed—this time in a carefully lowered voice:

“Well, the number 34 occurs oftener than any other; that is, if you are adding the first two and last two figures of each group together.”

“Wait a moment,” said Roger, still busily counting. Then, after a pause, he added:

“Yes, you are right, Harry; the number 34 does occur most frequently; and we can, I am sure, take it as representing the letter E. Now, going upon that assumption, A will be represented by 30, B by 31, C by 32, D by 33, and so on. Now I believe that we have the translation in our own hands. Let us make the experiment—but we ought to write it down as we go along, or else we shall forget part of it perhaps.”

“Ay, there is the difficulty,” said Harry; “we have no writing materials and nothing which we can use instead of them.”

“Not so fast, not so fast, lad,” his friend replied. “That is a difficulty which we must find means to overcome. Let us have a look round, and first see if there is anything that we can use for a pen. If we can find such a thing, the ink will be an easy matter afterwards.”

“Indeed?” exclaimed Harry incredulously. “I pray you explain how in the world you are going to get a supply of ink?”

“Never mind,” retorted Roger with a quiet smile; “you leave that to me. Get me something that will serve for a pen, and I will find the ink quickly enough.”

Seeing that Roger was not going to divulge the secret of the ink, Harry joined him in a search of the cell, looking for something that would answer the purpose.

Just at that moment there was a “click”, and, turning quickly round, they perceived that another meal had been pushed in through the trap-door.

“We will leave that for a time,” said Roger, intent upon his search. “The food can wait; but we cannot delay with what we are now doing; for we can never know when we may be interrupted.”

Harry agreed, and the search proceeded without very conspicuous success. A few fragments of straw, a quantity of woolly dust, a few tiny splinters of wood, and a small and extremely rusty nail were all that rewarded them.

“Ah!” ejaculated Harry, “I had forgotten that window-sill; there is more likely to be something in that accumulation of stuff up there than in the cell itself. Come and stand below it, so that I can mount on your shoulders, Roger; and then I can rake about there and see if I can find anything for our purpose.

“And, now that I come to think of it, we have never yet had a look out of that window. We can only see those high walls; there may be something to interest us below there, in the courtyard, or whatever it may be.”

Roger moved quickly to the other end of the cell, and, standing below the grated opening, allowed Harry to clamber up his body and finally to stand upon his shoulders.

Harry then grasped the bars of the grating, to take some of the pressure off his friend’s back, and began to burrow in the heap of dust and rubbish that had accumulated for years upon years on the sill. Suddenly Roger heard his name whispered softly—“Roger, Roger, Roger”, and became aware of the fact that Harry was hurriedly preparing to descend from his perch. Roger eased his friend to the floor, and then asked what was the matter.

“Why,” said Harry, “there is a man below who appears to be waiting there for some definite purpose; and when he saw me at the window he began to make signs, which, unfortunately, I could not understand; and then held out his hands, as though to catch something he expected me to throw out. I cannot make out at all what it is he wants; you had better have a look, Roger.”

“Yes,” answered Roger, “let me get on your shoulders at once, Harry; this may be an important matter. Perchance it may be someone who is willing to help us to escape, and wishes to communicate with us.”

Harry immediately helped his chum up to his own former position. Roger stood there for some considerable time, looking out, and then whispered to Harry to let him descend.

“Well, did you see him?” enquired Harry, when Roger had got down.

“Yes,” replied Roger. “I just caught a glimpse of him as he vanished. He seemed to be a ragged sort of fellow, so far as I could make out. I wish he had remained a little longer; but I suspect that something must have alarmed him, and so caused him to move away. I wonder what it is he wanted! Are you certain that it was to you he was making those signs?”

“Quite certain,” Harry answered. “He was looking directly at me; and when he saw that I had noticed him, he, as I said, held out his hands—so—as though to catch something that I was to throw out. But what could he have wanted us to give him? There is nothing in this cell which we could fling to him, except our meal, which, by the way, we have not yet touched. I wonder if he expected us to write anything, and throw it out to him!”

“I don’t see how he could expect that,” said Roger. “If we had not chanced to look out, we should never have been aware that he was there; so why should we have anything to write to an individual of whose existence we were unaware until a few moments ago?”

“True,” responded Harry. “I cannot make it out at all. Did you notice which way he went?”

“Yes,” answered Roger, “I did notice that. You know that the court below is enclosed by those four walls of the building? Well, there is a small gateway on the right-hand side looking from here, in the wall directly opposite, and I was just in time to see him vanish through that. It may be that he will return again, however. If it is really some person who is anxious to assist us to escape—and I cannot imagine that it would be any other—he will be sure to come back as soon as it is safe for him to do so. But I must confess that I cannot understand why he seemed to be waiting for a message. If he had been trying to get a paper or message to us it would have been a different matter; for the first arrangements for escape must come from outside, and not from us. We could do nothing without first learning what arrangements can be made by our supposititious friend outside. Left to ourselves, we can contrive no plan of escape. But the man has disappeared for the time being, and we can do naught until we get into communication with him, so let us get on with that cipher. I have found something that will do nicely for a pen. While I was standing on your shoulders, and after the mysterious man had gone, I had a look among that stuff on the window-sill, and was lucky enough to find this feather. It has been a long time there, judging by its appearance, and must have been dropped by some bird which by this time is doubtless dead. I should say that some other prisoner was once in the habit of feeding birds from this grating; and probably it was one of them that dropped this feather, which will be of so much service to us. We can cut it into a pen, and I will now tell you where we can find our ink. Just take this knife of yours, make a small cut in my arm, and—there is plenty of ink for us, although it is red; but that does not matter.”

With the knife Roger then carefully trimmed the quill of the small feather down into a fairly effective pen, and then turned his attention once more to the cipher.

Harry, who for some time past had been feeling the pangs of hunger rather severely, remonstrated with his friend.

“Look here, Roger,” said he, “let us eat our dinner before going on with that translation. I am feeling very hungry.”

“No, my friend,” replied Roger, “there is no time like the present. For aught we know we may never have another opportunity to work on this cryptogram. Our food can wait, and we shall relish it the more when we have time to eat it; but let us get finished with this matter first.”

Harry saw the wisdom of his chum’s remark, and, casting one more longing glance at the food, rejoined Roger at the stone table, and both lads began to pore over the paper again.

“Now,” remarked Roger, “you will notice that the lines of figures are far enough apart to allow us to write the letters corresponding to each group of them directly underneath, and that will be a great help to us; but we will write nothing until we are quite certain that we have hit upon the correct method of solving this cryptogram.

“You will remember, Harry, that by going over all the figures, we deduced that the number 34 represented the letter E. You will notice that this number, 34, is made up of many different groups of two figures, such as 17 and 17, 14 and 20, 12 and 22, 16 and 18, 15 and 19, 13 and 21, and so forth; but that, I fancy, is only done to make the solving of the cipher more difficult. Now, assuming the letter A to be 30, B to be 31, C to be 32, D to be 33, E, as we have reckoned, 34, let us apply this method to the figures and see what we get.

“We have already surmised that the number 1581 stands for no particular letter, but is really what it seems most likely to be, that is, the year in which this cryptogram was invented and written. Besides which, 15 and 81 added, according to the system we are now employing, would make 96, a