“We know that the most frequently used vowel in English is E. And, by the way, this translation proved fairly easy, because the transmitter of the message made a gap between each of his groups of figures, showing that each collection stood for a separate word.”
“I noticed that,—go ahead.”
“I was trying to show you something of the method; but I guess you’ve about grasped it. In figuring out the cipher I made groups of all the numerals occurring in your transcript of the message, and found that the number ‘five’ appeared most often. I assumed, then, that it stood for H. Working in this way, I found that the first word of the message was The. That Th stuck for some time, till I saw that the figures ‘twenty-five’ had been used to express the phonetic sound of Th.
“This gave me a valuable clew. I wrote down The and then passed on to the next words. Figuring as before, I assigned the number ‘three,’ which appeared alone, to the letter C. I was puzzled for a minute. ‘The C’ didn’t seem to mean a whole lot, but I let it go and passed on to the next word. Using my system I spelled out King, and then, of course, I realized that the C was a phonetic rendering for the first part of the yacht Sea King’s name.”
“Great guns!” gasped Jack, “then they are interested in dad’s craft and——”
“Wait a while; let me get the rest of it off my chest. I’m not going to tire your patience out by going through every step. I’ve told you enough to show you my method. As I got further combinations it became more and more simple till I finally had this message figured out:
“‘The Sea King is disabled. Trying to get bearings from you know who. Vagrant left Lone Island this P. M. going to rescue. You had better make all speed or they will beat you out. Am proceeding. X. Y. Z.’”
Jack’s lips emitted an amazed whistle.
“What sort of a maze have we blundered into?” he exclaimed. “This X. Y. Z., who is he? Who was he talking to? What are they after?”
“All of which questions will be answered by the time we arrive at the scene of the wreck, I imagine,” quoth Tom with a dry intonation; “in the meantime, it looks as if we are ‘it’ in this marine game of blind-man’s buff.”