The first--and what seemed to me infinitely the most important--of these was nothing less than my discovery of the long-sought key to Richard Saint Leger's secret cipher; and it was brought about in a manner so singular and unexpected that I must leave the explanation of the matter to the psychological student, it being altogether beyond the comprehension of such a simple, matter-of-fact, unlearned seaman as myself. It happened thus. I fully realised that it would be impossible for me to continue cruising to and fro in those Eastern waters for an indefinite period; I knew that a moment must sooner or later arrive when the force of circumstances would compel me to shape a course once more for England; and it already appeared to me highly probable that the arrival of that moment would prove to be coincident with that of the arrival of the ship in Sydney Harbour. I consequently became increasingly anxious to discover the interpretation of the cryptogram before the conclusion of the passage upon which we were then engaged. No sooner, therefore, were we fairly at sea than I devoted myself in grim and serious earnest to my quest for the key that was to unlock the secrets of the exasperating cipher. The document consisted, as the reader will remember, entirely of long, unbroken rows of figures--with the exception of a rather singular sketch in the midst of the text, which I took to be a representation of the island whereon the treasure was said to have been secreted, as viewed from certain bearings--and I knew that these figures must stand in lieu of a certain arrangement of the letters of the alphabet, forming words. I had early noted the somewhat curious fact that there was but one solitary nought throughout the document; but that only helped me so far as to render me morally certain that the letters of the text could scarcely be represented by units; and, taking this as my initial theory, I attempted every other combination of numbers that either my ingenuity or my fancy could suggest. In vain; I could hit upon no arrangement of numbers that, when transposed into letters, would give me a single intelligible word, either in English or any other language with which I had the slightest acquaintance. I at length grew so thoroughly worried over the matter that my nerves became sensibly affected; I turned irritable, and began to suffer from repeated attacks of extreme anxiety and depression; my appetite failed me, and I became a victim to the torment of insomnia.