The Mysterious Parchment

: A Journey To The Centre Of The Earth

"I Declare," cried my uncle, striking the table fiercely with his fist,

"I declare to you it is Runic and contains some wonderful secret, which

I must get at, at any price."



I was about to reply when he stopped me.



"Sit down," he said, quite fiercely, "and write to my dictation."



I obeyed.



"I will substitute," he said, "a letter of our alphabet for that of the
>
Runic: we will then see what that will produce. Now, begin and make no

mistakes."



The dictation commenced with the following incomprehensible result:





mm.rnlls esruel seecJde

sgtssmf unteief niedrke

kt,samn atrateS Saodrrn

emtnaeI nuaect rrilSa

Atvaar .nscrc ieaabs

ccdrmi eeutul frantu

dt,iac oseibo KediiY





Scarcely giving me time to finish, my uncle snatched the document from

my hands and examined it with the most rapt and deep attention.



"I should like to know what it means," he said, after a long period.



I certainly could not tell him, nor did he expect me to his

conversation being uniformly answered by himself.



"I declare it puts me in mind of a cryptograph," he cried, "unless,

indeed, the letters have been written without any real meaning; and yet

why take so much trouble? Who knows but I may be on the verge of some

great discovery?"



My candid opinion was that it was all rubbish! But this opinion I kept

carefully to myself, as my uncle's choler was not pleasant to bear. All

this time he was comparing the book with the parchment.



"The manuscript volume and the smaller document are written in different

hands," he said, "the cryptograph is of much later date than the book;

there is an undoubted proof of the correctness of my surmise. [An

irrefragable proof I took it to be.] The first letter is a double M,

which was only added to the Icelandic language in the twelfth

century this makes the parchment two hundred years posterior to the

volume."



The circumstances appeared very probable and very logical, but it was

all surmise to me.



"To me it appears probable that this sentence was written by some owner

of the book. Now who was the owner, is the next important question.

Perhaps by great good luck it may be written somewhere in the volume."



With these words Professor Hardwigg took off his spectacles, and, taking

a powerful magnifying glass, examined the book carefully.



On the fly leaf was what appeared to be a blot of ink, but on

examination proved to be a line of writing almost effaced by time. This

was what he sought; and, after some considerable time, he made out these

letters:






"Arne Saknussemm!" he cried in a joyous and triumphant tone, "that is

not only an Icelandic name, but of a learned professor of the sixteenth

century, a celebrated alchemist."



I bowed as a sign of respect.



"These alchemists," he continued, "Avicenna, Bacon, Lully, Paracelsus,

were the true, the only learned men of the day. They made surprising

discoveries. May not this Saknussemm, nephew mine, have hidden on this

bit of parchment some astounding invention? I believe the cryptograph to

have a profound meaning which I must make out."



My uncle walked about the room in a state of excitement almost

impossible to describe.



"It may be so, sir," I timidly observed, "but why conceal it from

posterity, if it be a useful, a worthy discovery?"



"Why how should I know? Did not Galileo make a secret of his

discoveries in connection with Saturn? But we shall see. Until I

discover the meaning of this sentence I will neither eat nor sleep."



"My dear uncle " I began.



"Nor you neither," he added.



It was lucky I had taken double allowance that day.



"In the first place," he continued, "there must be a clue to the

meaning. If we could find that, the rest would be easy enough."



I began seriously to reflect. The prospect of going without food and

sleep was not a promising one, so I determined to do my best to solve

the mystery. My uncle, meanwhile, went on with his soliloquy.



"The way to discover it is easy enough. In this document there are one

hundred and thirty-two letters, giving seventy-nine consonants to

fifty-three vowels. This is about the proportion found in most southern

languages, the idioms of the north being much more rich in consonants.

We may confidently predict, therefore, that we have to deal with a

southern dialect."



Nothing could be more logical.



"Now," said Professor Hardwigg, "to trace the particular language."



"As Shakespeare says, 'that is the question,"' was my rather satirical

reply.



"This man Saknussemm," he continued, "was a very learned man: now as he

did not write in the language of his birthplace, he probably, like most

learned men of the sixteenth century, wrote in Latin. If, however, I

prove wrong in this guess, we must try Spanish, French, Italian, Greek,

and even Hebrew. My own opinion, though, is decidedly in favor of

Latin."



This proposition startled me. Latin was my favorite study, and it seemed

sacrilege to believe this gibberish to belong to the country of Virgil.



"Barbarous Latin, in all probability," continued my uncle, "but still

Latin."



"Very probably," I replied, not to contradict him.



"Let us see into the matter," continued my uncle; "here you see we have

a series of one hundred and thirty-two letters, apparently thrown

pell-mell upon paper, without method or organization. There are words

which are composed wholly of consonants, such as mm.rnlls, others

which are nearly all vowels, the fifth, for instance, which is unteief,

and one of the last oseibo. This appears an extraordinary combination.

Probably we shall find that the phrase is arranged according to some

mathematical plan. No doubt a certain sentence has been written out and

then jumbled up some plan to which some figure is the clue. Now, Harry,

to show your English wit what is that figure?"



I could give him no hint. My thoughts were indeed far away. While he was

speaking I had caught sight of the portrait of my cousin Gretchen, and

was wondering when she would return.



We were affianced, and loved one another very sincerely. But my uncle,

who never thought even of such sublunary matters, knew nothing of this.

Without noticing my abstraction, the Professor began reading the

puzzling cryptograph all sorts of ways, according to some theory of his

own. Presently, rousing my wandering attention, he dictated one precious

attempt to me.



I mildly handed it over to him. It read as follows:





mmessunkaSenrA.icefdoK.segnittamurtn

ecertserrette,rotaivsadua,ednecsedsadne

lacartniiilrJsiratracSarbmutabiledmek

meretarcsilucoYsleffenSnI.






I could scarcely keep from laughing, while my uncle, on the contrary,

got in a towering passion, struck the table with his fist, darted out of

the room, out of the house, and then taking to his heels was presently

lost to sight.



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