uncing, "Six bells, sir," (the time at
which I was regularly called every morning), awoke me; and in that same
instant I lost all recollection of every particular of my dream,
remembering only that in it I really seemed to have at last found the
solution of the hitherto inexplicable enigma.

Seriously annoyed at so inopportune an interruption to a dream that I
quite regarded as a revelation, and vexed at my inability to recollect
any more of the process of translation which I had followed than that it
was an entirely novel one, I took my usual salt-water bath, dressed, and
in due course sat down to breakfast, all the while striving desperately
but unsuccessfully to recall the lost clue. My passengers observed my
preoccupation, and endeavoured--for some time unavailingly--to withdraw
me from it; at length, however, the consciousness dawned upon me that my
peculiar behaviour must appear to them decidedly discourteous. I
therefore aroused myself, threw off my abstraction, and apologised;
explaining that I had been endeavouring to recall the details of a dream
in which I seemed to have discovered the long-sought key to the secret
of my hidden treasure.

"A dream!" exclaimed Miss Merrivale, delighted. "Oh, captain, _pray_
tell us all about it; it may help you to remember."

I had no such hope, having already racked my brain until it seemed to
reel, and all to no purpose; but it would have been childish to have
refused the request. I therefore began by telling them how that I had
retired on the preceding night with my mind full of the subject; how I
had lain tossing restlessly, hour after hour, striving to think out some
arrangement or system that I had not yet tried; and how eventually I had
sunk into a feverish, nightmare slumber in which my brain continued its
arduous, painful search for the key of the problem.

"At length," continued I, "an idea came to me; and, taking a sheet of
paper, I--I--Why, by all that is wonderful, _I have it again_!"

And, springing from my chair, to the no small consternation of my
companions, who evidently thought I had suddenly gone demented, I rushed
away to my state-room and, seizing a sheet of paper, jotted down the
system that had just recurred to my memory. Then, heedless of my
unfinished breakfast and everything else, I drew out the precious
document itself, and, using the key that had come to me in such an
extraordinary manner, soon discovered, to my inexpressible delight, that