He felt convinced, however, that a crude example of the simplest, most primitive cipher was contained upon the sheet. Should the words later prove to be in English he could finally read it all. He began to compare the recurrence of the various symbols at once, discovering that the sign in the form of a cross had been used no less than fourteen times, and was therefore almost certainly E. The next in importance was the figure 3, which he felt might be either A, or N, or S, since these, after E, are among the characters in English spelling most frequently employed.
On another clean chip of whittled wood he jotted down a few of the "words" with E's in each instance substituted for the crosses, and then began attempting to make clear sense by substituting A's, N's, and S's for the figure three, the figure one, and open squares, which, he found, had been often represented.
It was a blind and tedious business. His fire burned low, in his absorption, and the midnight constellations marched past the zenith of the heavens before he finally realized the folly of his quest.
"It's not a bit of good in the world, if I knew all about it," he finally confessed, "no matter what it means."
He went to bed. But he did not sleep. Those singular pyramids and the cipher still lingered before his inner vision. What was the mystery hidden behind the dead man chained in the rotting barque, the headless skeletons lying near the swamp, and now these documents, found in the tube and so carefully concealed?
"I give it up," he told himself at last, in an effort to dismiss it all and compose his active brain. "I wish I had a stouter tube to make a good bomb for the tiger."
He thought perhaps he could use the oxidized cylinder as it was, and began thereupon to wonder how he should make a fuse by which its powder contents might be ignited. Thus he drowsed off at last, with fantastic dreams swiftly solving the sum of his problems.