In this condition of mind and body I one night retired to my cabin after a day of petty worries, in which everything and everybody seemed to have been at cross-purposes with me, and--utterly worn out with the prolonged tension upon my nerves--ultimately subsided into a fitful, restless, nightmare kind of slumber, during which I continued in my dreams the researches upon which my thoughts had now been for nearly three weeks concentrated. Over and over again did I seem to arrange upon paper an experimental system of numbering the alphabet, in the hope of obtaining some intelligible result; and at length, to my great astonishment and inexpressible delight, methought I found one. In feverish haste I-- still in my dream--set to work upon the translation of the document, and was progressing swimmingly, when a sharp rapping upon my state-room door, and the steward's voice announcing, "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_!"