We had arranged to defer the opening of the box till the afternoon, when all three of us would be present; but I firmly believe my father could not resist the temptation of glancing inside to make sure the parchment was still there.
He arrived home in high good humour, for on the return journey, he had picked up a horseshoe and had crossed the ferry in company with a hunchback, both of which incidents are regarded, even in these matter-of-fact days, as being conducive to a run of "good luck"; and preparations were immediately made for the examination of the mysterious relic of old Humphrey Trevena's seafaring days.
I handled the box with a feeling almost of reverence. It was about the size of a cigar-case, and made of a dull, heavy metal resembling bronze, although tarnished with the effects of time and exposure to the salt water. It was embellished on the front of the outside by quaint figures representing Boreal urging a seventeenth-century frigate on its course, with Neptune and Britannia holding a friendly conference in the background, and, on the back, by a monogram of letters "H.T." and the date 1719.
"Open it, Reggie," said my father; and, after I had fumbled about with the spring for a few moments, the lid flew open, and I saw for the first time the puzzling piece of parchment which was fated to lead us through great perils by land and by water ere we accomplished our quest.
With trembling hands I unfolded the paper, my father and uncle looking eagerly over my shoulder. As Uncle Herbert had already informed us, there was nothing but a big square subdivided into a host of smaller ones, and a few unintelligible words and the symbols of degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude and longitude, with no figures given, save a solitary figure 1.
Here, in fact, is a copy of it—
[Illustration: The unsolved cipher.]
"Well?" asked my uncle, elevating his eyebrows. "What do you make of it, Howard?"