"That may be," said he, "but why waste your tongue on three syllables when two will do?"
I ignored the question and put another.
"Can you read it?" I asked.
"With difficulty," he said, "by this light. Let us return to my rooms and see if we can decimate it."
"Decipher, decipher, Hans," said I.
"As you will," he retorted, with a sweep of the oars which brought us under the shadow of the wharf.
Tying our boat, we hastened back to Pumpernickel's rooms, and within a half-hour of our find we were busily engaged in translating the extraordinary narrative of Captain Hammerpestle, commander of the Gretchen B., a ship that, as we learned from the captain's story, was once of ill-repute, later of pleasant memory, and finally the central figure of an ocean mystery never as yet solved, though at least two hundred and fifty years had passed since she was given up for lost.
The story was in substance as follows: