Short Stories Old and New Part 14

which a.s.sures us that the first letter is _A_, and that the first two words are 'A good.'

"To avoid confusion, it is now time that we arrange our key, as far as discovered, in a tabular form. It will stand thus:

5 represents a + " d 8 " e 3 " g 4 " h 6 " i * " n $ " o ( " r ; " t

"We have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important letters represented, and it will be unnecessary to proceed with the details of the solution. I have said enough to convince you that ciphers of this nature are readily soluble, and to give you some insight into the rationale of their development. But be a.s.sured that the specimen before us appertains to the very simplest species of cryptograph. It now only remains to give you the full translation of the characters upon the parchment, as unriddled. Here it is:

"'_A good gla.s.s in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat twenty one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the death's-head a bee line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out_.'"

"But," said I, "the enigma seems still in as bad a condition as ever.

How is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon about 'devil's seats,' 'death's-head,' and 'bishop's hostel'?"

"I confess," replied Legrand, "that the matter still wears a serious aspect, when regarded with a casual glance. My first endeavor was to divide the sentence into the natural division intended by the cryptographist."

"You mean, to punctuate it?"

"Something of that kind."

"But how is it possible to effect this?"

"I reflected that it had been a _point_ with the writer to run his words together without division, so as to increase the difficulty of solution.

Now, a not over-acute man, in pursuing such an object, would be nearly certain to overdo the matter. When, in the course of his composition, he arrived at a break in his subject which would naturally require a pause, or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to run his characters, at this place, more than usually close together. If you will observe the MS., in the present instance, you will easily detect five such cases of unusual crowding. Acting on this hint, I made the division thus:

"'_A good gla.s.s in the Bishop's hostel in the devil's seat--twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes--northeast and by north--main branch seventh limb east side--shoot from the left eye of the death's-head--a bee-line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out_.'"

"Even this division," said I, "leaves me still in the dark."

"It left me also in the dark," replied Legrand, "for a few days; during which I made diligent inquiry, in the neighborhood of Sullivan's Island, for any building which went by the name of the 'Bishop's Hotel'; for, of course, I dropped the obsolete word 'hostel.' Gaining no information on the subject, I was on the point of extending my sphere of search, and proceeding in a more systematic manner, when one morning it entered into my head, quite suddenly, that this 'Bishop's Hostel' might have some reference to an old family, of the name of Bessop, which, time out of mind, had held possession of an ancient manor-house, about four miles to the northward of the island. I accordingly went over to the plantation, and reinst.i.tuted my inquiries among the older negroes of the place. At length one of the most aged of the women said that she had heard of such a place as _Bessop's Castle_, and thought that she could guide me to it, but that it was not a castle, nor a tavern, but a high rock.

"I offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur, she consented to accompany me to the spot. We found it without much difficulty, when, dismissing her, I proceeded to examine the place. The 'castle' consisted of an irregular a.s.semblage of cliffs and rocks--one of the latter being quite remarkable for its height as well as for its insulated and artificial appearance. I clambered to its apex, and then felt much at a loss as to what should be next done.

"While I was busied in reflection, my eyes fell on a narrow ledge in the eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon which I stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not more than a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it gave it a rude resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our ancestors. I made no doubt that here was the 'devil's seat' alluded to in the MS., and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle.

"The 'good gla.s.s,' I knew, could have reference to nothing but a telescope; for the word 'gla.s.s' is rarely employed in any other sense by seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope to be used, and a definite point of view, _admitting no variation_, from which to use it.

Nor did I hesitate to believe that the phrases 'twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes,' and 'northeast and by north,' were intended as directions for the levelling of the gla.s.s. Greatly excited by these discoveries, I hurried home, procured a telescope, and returned to the rock.

"I let myself down to the ledge, and found that it was impossible to retain a seat on it unless in one particular position. This fact confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use the gla.s.s. Of course, the 'twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes' could allude to nothing but elevation above the visible horizon, since the horizontal direction was clearly indicated by the words, 'northeast and by north.' This latter direction I at once established by means of a pocket-compa.s.s; then, pointing the gla.s.s as nearly at an angle of twenty-one degrees of elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it cautiously up or down, until my attention was arrested by a circular rift or opening in the foliage of a large tree that overtopped its fellows in the distance. In the centre of this rift I perceived a white spot, but could not, at first, distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I again looked, and now made it out to be a human skull.

"On this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved; for the phrase 'main branch, seventh limb, east side,' could refer only to the position of the skull on the tree, while 'shoot from the left eye of the death's-head' admitted, also, of but one interpretation, in regard to a search for buried treasure. I perceived that the design was to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that a bee-line, or in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest point of the trunk through 'the shot' (or the spot where the bullet fell), and thence extended to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate a definite point--and beneath this point I thought it at least _possible_ that a deposit of value lay concealed."

"All this," I said, "is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious, still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop's Hotel, what then?"

"Why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I turned homewards. The instant that I left 'the devil's seat,' however, the circular rift vanished; nor could I get a glimpse of it afterwards, turn as I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity in this whole business, is the fact (for repeated experiment has convinced me it _is_ a fact) that the circular opening in question is visible from no other attainable point of view than that afforded by the narrow ledge on the face of the rock.

"In this expedition to the 'Bishop's Hotel' I had been attended by Jupiter, who had no doubt observed, for some weeks past, the abstraction of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave me alone. But on the next day, getting up very early, I contrived to give him the slip, and went into the hills in search of the tree. After much toil I found it.

When I came home at night my valet proposed to give me a flogging. With the rest of the adventure I believe you are as well acquainted as myself."

"I suppose," said I, "you missed the spot, in the first attempt at digging, through Jupiter's stupidity in letting the bug fall through the right instead of through the left eye of the skull."

"Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two inches and a half in the 'shot'--that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest the tree; and had the treasure been _beneath_ the 'shot' the error would have been of little moment; but the 'shot,' together with the nearest point of the tree, were merely two points for the establishment of a line of direction; of course the error, however trivial in the beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and, by the time we had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. But for my deep-seated convictions that treasure was here somewhere actually buried, we might have had all our labor in vain."

"I presume the fancy of _the skull_--of letting fall a bullet through the skull's eye--was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through this ominous insignium."

"Perhaps so; still, I cannot help thinking that common-sense had quite as much to do with the matter as poetical consistency. To be visible from the Devil's seat, it was necessary that the object, if small, should be _white_; and there is nothing like your human skull for retaining and even increasing its whiteness under exposure to all vicissitudes of weather."

"But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle--how excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist on letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull?"

"Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung the beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An observation of yours about its great weight suggested the latter idea."

"Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me. What are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?"

"That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them--and yet it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would imply.

It is clear that Kidd--if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure, which I doubt not--it is clear that he must have had a.s.sistance in the labor.

But, the worst of this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient to remove all partic.i.p.ants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with a mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the pit; perhaps it required a dozen--who shall tell?"

V. A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1843)

BY CHARLES d.i.c.kENS (1812-1870)

[_Setting_. In this most famous of Christmas stories d.i.c.kens gives us the very atmosphere of the season with all the contrasts that poverty and wealth, miserliness and charity, the past and the future can suggest. Though he had London in mind, any great industrial center would have served as well, for d.i.c.kens was thinking primarily of the relations between employer and employee. That Christmas is better kept in England now than when d.i.c.kens wrote is a triumph due more to "A Christmas Carol"

than to any other one piece of prose or verse.

_Plot_. The story was planned rather than plotted. By calling it a carol and dividing it into staves, d.i.c.kens would have us think of it not as a narrative but as a song, full of the joy and good will that Christmas ought to diffuse. It is a rill from the fountain of the first great Christmas chant, "On earth peace, good will toward men." The theme is not so much the duty of service as the joy of service, the happiness that we feel in making others happy; and the four carols mark the four stages in the conversion of Scrooge from solitary selfishness to social good will. The plan is simple but it is suffused with a love and sympathy that no one but d.i.c.kens or O. Henry could have given it. If "The Gold-Bug" is a triumph of the a.n.a.lytic intellect, this story is a triumph of the social impulses that make the world better. "It seems to me," said Thackeray, "a national benefit, and to every man and woman who reads it a personal kindness." While writing it d.i.c.kens said: "I wept and laughed and wept again." And yet the psychology of the plot is as soundly intellectual as the style is emotional. d.i.c.kens knew that a flint-hearted man like Scrooge could not be changed by forces brought to bear from without. The appeal must come from within. He must himself see his past, his present, and his probable future, but in a new light and from a wider angle of vision. The dream is only a means to this end. A man moves to a higher realm of thought and action not by learning new truths but by seeing the old truths differently related.

_Characters_. Scrooge is, of course, the central character. He is also a perfect example of the changing character as contrasted with the stationary character. In fact all the other characters remain essentially the same, while Scrooge, who at the beginning is unfriendly and friendless, becomes at the end "as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough in the good old world." It is difficult to create any kind of character, whether stationary or changing, but the latter is the more difficult. Both demand rare powers of observation and interpretation, but the ascending or descending character demands a knowledge of the chemistry of conduct that only the masters have.

The Cratchits must not be overlooked. Tiny Tim's "G.o.d bless us every one" has at least become the symbol of Christmas benevolence wherever Christmas is celebrated in English-speaking lands.]

STAVE ONE

MARLEY'S GHOST

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.

The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change for anything he chose to put his hand to.

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise?

Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole a.s.sign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, his sole mourner.