The pleasant town of Q——, among its other attractions, possesses a bone-cave. The cave, situated in a little valley close by the sea, had not long been discovered to contain bones before it was invaded by an army of geologists, who dug deep holes in the floor, and unearthed the remains of prehistoric fires, of ancient knives and needles, and of even a man’s jaw buried in stalagmite. And every year the fashionable people of Q—— made an excursion into the windings of the cavern, under the guidance of gnome-like guides with torches.

Within a certain period of its modern history, the Q—— bone-cave, like the sacred caves of India, had a high-priest, an exponent of its mysteries. He did not, however, dwell in its recesses, but in a smart villa overlooking Q—— Bay. He was a local celebrity, and the most active member of a committee appointed to examine the cavern. The cavern was his hobby, and as it was of tolerably uniform temperature, there was no time of year when he did not take delight in exploring its mysteries. Every fresh discovery was a joy to Mr Grope; and though a sceptical few laughed at him, and even called some of his flint knives in question, his researches had thrown much light on geology and archÆology. One thing alone was wanting—he had found no dates in the cave. There were dates and inscriptions in caves belonging to other places, and he did not like Q—— to be behind them.

Prefacing, for the benefit of the reader, that stalactite is the substance that hangs to the roof of caverns, like icicles, and stalagmite the substance that has fallen to the floor, a concretion of carbonate of lime—we proceed with the story. One day, as Mr Grope was examining a wall in one of the passages, he thought he detected a weakness in the rock, and working at it with his great hammer he found that it speedily crumbled away. Soon he had made a hole through which he was able to pass, and presently he stood in a small apartment full of large stalagmitic blocks, and with a very moderate amount of water dripping from the roof. As he flashed his lantern about, his keen eye caught sight of artificial markings on the smooth surface of one of the blocks. His heart leaped within him. Here of a certainty was at last an inscription which, composed of several well-formed letters carved on the block but interrupted by breaks, ran as follows:

F . . ll . . . to . . . Nor.
Capt T . . ck
r . . m 20Br
15 . . 71k . . to ret

Mr Grope carefully copied the interesting record into his note-book. He looked about for more inscriptions, but this was apparently the only one; however, there might be other unexplored caverns beyond. At present he must devote himself to deciphering these letters. He had a clue in the date 1571, for though there was a break between the ‘15’ and the ‘71,’ it was only caused by a slight inequality in the block.

That evening, in the seclusion of his study, he devoted himself with ardour to the inscription. He did not doubt that it was intended for abbreviated Latin. In the sixteenth century every one who could write knew Latin, and wrote Latin too when he or she wished to be succinct. There were, it is true, only scraps of words on which to proceed, but this circumstance did but occasion a pleasing exercise of Mr Grope’s ingenuity. The conquest would have been too easy had the words been given at length. The very uncertainty had in it that excitement which is dear to the hearts of all true antiquaries.

Before he thoroughly set to his task, Mr Grope balanced in his mind whether he should treat the inscription as private or political. He inclined to the political aspect. If it were private, nothing could be made of it, and it was unlikely that a gentleman should carve his personal remarks in the depths of a subterranean cave. No doubt the letters referred to public matters. For a moment Mr Grope could not recollect who reigned in England in 1571; for though he took a great interest in history, he was somewhat oblivious about dates. Soon, however, a vision of Queen Elizabeth in ruff and farthingale rose before him, and then he attacked the first line in good earnest.

F . . ll . . . to . . . Nor.

Now it seemed clear as noonday that Nor was the first syllable of a proper name, or at least the name of a place; for Mr Grope remembered that in the sixteenth century it was not the custom to begin every noun with a capital letter, as it was in the eighteenth. Could it refer to Norwich? Norwich was a long way from Q——; but the gentleman in the cave might have been mixed up in a conspiracy which embraced the capture of several towns. Mr Grope took down Mr Froude’s History of England, and turned over the pages referring to Elizabeth’s reign in search of names beginning with Nor. Then a great light broke upon him, and he wondered that he had not remembered his history better. The name of Norfolk occurred several times in connection with what Mr Froude calls the ‘Ridolfi Plot,’ and the ‘Ridolfi Plot’ was going on in 1571. The course of his investigation seemed to flow almost too smoothly now. He soon found that the first line ran: ‘Fallete tollite Norfolk’ (Betray and take Norfolk); whence it was evident that the man in the cave had played false to all parties, and after engaging in the conspiracy, had leagued with some fellow-conspirators to betray their chief, the unhappy Duke who preceded Mary of Scotland to the scaffold instead of sharing her throne. ‘Betray and take Norfolk!’ It was not good Latin certainly, but good enough for an inscription where there were so many breaks, which imagination could fill up with the elegances of language; and the morality was characteristic of the sixteenth century.

The second line of the inscription puzzled Mr Grope more.

Capt T . . ck

The two words composing it were carved in larger letters, and stood by themselves, as if specially important. ‘Capt’ of course meant caput, a head, and might hint at the approaching loss of Norfolk’s own; but the ‘T . . ck’ puzzled Mr Grope sorely, and was evidently another cognomen. It puzzled him so much that he resolved to finish the remainder of the inscription

r . . m20Br

first, and see if it threw any light on the subject.

The ‘20’ evidently indicated the day of the month; but to what month could ‘r . . m’ refer? Could it mean rosarum mensis—the month of roses? Might not a poetical conspirator thus paraphrase the month of June? Norfolk certainly was not beheaded till June 1572; but it was possible that a fellow-plotter might have decided on betraying him a full year before that date. ‘Br’ perhaps stood for brevi, by way of urging that the deed should be accomplished summarily; and 1571 spoke for itself. The ‘k’ which followed might be either a small or a capital ‘k,’ but Mr Grope concluded that it was the initial of another proper name; and he had soon persuaded himself that the sentence ‘K .. to ret’ ran: ‘K—— tollite retinete,’ and was intended as an injunction to take and retain K——. Who or what K—— was did not much signify, since there was no doubt about Norfolk.

It was the second line which continued to puzzle Mr Grope. He brooded over it when he went to bed, and could not sleep because of it; but in the small-hours of the morning, that season of daring inspirations, it flashed across him that ‘Capt T..ck’ meant neither more nor less than ‘Caput Turci,’ a Turk’s head. ‘The man may have written k for i by inadvertence. But why should a Turk’s head be written about in the cave near Q——?’ It struck Mr Grope that the battle of Lepanto had been fought in 1571, and that the conspirator might be alluding to an invasion of England which was to take place, when the Turk’s head should be figuratively cut off. On the following morning, a Dictionary of Dates accompanied the ham and toast on Mr Grope’s breakfast-table; and he ascertained that the battle of Lepanto had been fought in October, whereas he had decided that the inscription was written in June, and that it had something to do with English refugees and the Turkish fleet. This interpretation certainly gave a wider and more European interest to the writing in the Q—— bone-cave. But on further consideration, it seemed to Mr Grope that he would hardly be able to maintain it in printed controversy with the learned. The Turk’s head was pitchforked with so much abruptness among the directions to secure Norfolk and K——, that unless it were supposed to be a watchword among the conspirators, it seemed impossible to dovetail it in.

The antiquary did not go out that morning; he retired to his study and reflected on the difficulties of the Turk’s head. At last another light came in upon him, reminding him that there were many inns in the country with the sign of the Saracen’s Head, relics of the medieval time when the Saracens were the bugbears of Europe. Very likely there had been inns called the Turk’s Head in the sixteenth century, when Europe was always in terror of the Turks, and Mr Grope even fancied that he remembered seeing one with that sign in a village in the east of England. Looked at in this new light, the meaning of the inscription appeared to be: ‘Betray and take Norfolk at the “Turk’s Head” inn, on the 20th of June 1571, with all possible haste. Take and retain K——.’

Writing this out at full length, Mr Grope read it over with fond pride. He had thoughts of sending a letter on the subject to that scientific paper the Minerva at once, but prudence intervened, and he determined that he would first consult Sir H—— T——, the great archÆologist, whom he had helped to lionise at Q——. It would be as well to say, when he wrote to the Minerva, that his friend Sir H—— T—— agreed with him as to the solution of the mystery; and he accordingly despatched a full account of the matter to the great man. That evening Mr Grope dined out, and could not refrain from imparting his triumph to a select circle of his acquaintances. Mr Grope was generally admitted to be the most intellectual resident at Q——. If a strange fish was caught in the bay, a strange fossil found in a quarry, or a coin dug up in a field, it was always referred to Mr Grope; and there were only one or two people who ever presumed to smile at his conclusions. And now when Mr Grope dilated on the conspirator and the inscription in the newly-found cavern, addressing in his drawling tones the small audience in the drawing-room after dinner—for he had kept the sensation for the benefit of the ladies—no one arose to dispute his explanation. The conspirator’s mention of the month of roses was especially attractive and convincing.

But it came to pass that Sir H—— T—— was not quite convinced. That savant thought it not impossible that the inscription might have something to do with the Ridolfi Plot, as the date was 1571; but as to the rest he differed from Mr Grope, courteously but decidedly. He did not believe in the Latin, and especially in Mr Grope’s Latin. He did not believe in the poetic paraphrase of June. He had read a good deal of sixteenth-century correspondence, and had never found a conspirator or any one else who spoke of June as the month of roses. ‘Nor’ might stand for Norfolk, though such was not Sir H—— T——’s opinion. Did Mr Grope think that the inscription was either partly or wholly written in cipher?

To say that Mr Grope was not disappointed, would not be adhering to the truth. He had arranged the matter in his mind, and had foreseen a triumphant career for his inscription among the archÆologists and historians. It seemed impossible that Sir H—— could doubt such inevitable conclusions. The whole thing, as Mr Grope made it out, had fitted together like a Chinese puzzle. Yes, he almost resolved to persevere in his own view. To hold a controversy with Sir H—— T—— might make him nearly as great a man as Sir H—— himself. But he felt in his heart that no one would side with the Turk’s Head and the month of roses when Sir H—— was against them. Mr Grope was convinced of the truth of his own interpretation; but he would collect another possible meaning or two, and while pronouncing in favour of the first, submit the others to the learned public. After all, the idea of a cipher opened out a pleasing vista of conjecture. Much conjecture there must of course be, when conspirators would write in disjointed fragments. In the Ridolfi Plot he possessed at least a basis of operations.

It so happened that our antiquarian friend had some acquaintance with a gentleman who was now searching the archives at Simancas for facts to confirm a favourite theory, and who had on one occasion dined with him at Q——; and to him Mr Grope now conceived the happy thought of writing, with a request that he would send him a few of the ciphers used by Philip II. and his correspondents. In due time he received the keys of five or six ciphers, inclosed in a courteous note. The historian himself had sympathy with Mr Grope’s efforts in the cause of archÆological science, and had besides, a lively recollection of Mr Grope’s ’47 port.

And now Mr Grope spent a long morning in his study with the ciphers before him, labouring to make them fit in with the inscription. If cipher really had been used, it seemed probable that English would have been used also. On this assumption, therefore, he proceeded; but the first few keys which he applied unlocked nothing but sheer nonsense. The next especially attracted Mr Grope, inasmuch as the historian told him that it had been used by Mary Queen of Scots. He had reserved it as his last hope; and on further investigation he found that in this cipher, London was termed Norway, and thus written plainly without further disguise. With regard to words which were not proper names, the fifth and sixth letters from the one intended were used alternately. When Mr Grope applied this key to the inscription, he came to the conclusion that it suited it admirably, with the exception of that unfortunate second line, which had puzzled him so much before. He really thought, that as those two words ‘Capt T..ck,’ were written in larger letters than the others, and conspicuously placed by themselves, they might be actually put down as a watchword; Why not, after all, ‘Caput Turci?’ The rest of the inscription he transposed as follows:

h..rr yu Lon
w . . . s 20 g w
1571 p yu wky.

The sequence of letters was not kept up in the second ‘yu,’ the fifth being used where the sixth ought to be; but as the word was apparently the second person plural, Mr Grope thought it probable that the conspirator would not be particular in his counting where so small a word was concerned. It is convenient in such matters to allow for a little negligence. In its new aspect Mr Grope saw the inscription thus:

hurry you Londonwards
with speed twenty great wagons
1571.pay you weekly.

Mr Grope’s head now absolutely ached with his efforts, and he drew his hand down his long gray beard with a feeling of relief as he leaned back in his chair. He nevertheless believed that this last labour was in a measure thrown away, and that the first solution was the right one. Still there was an air of probability about that ‘pay you weekly,’ a matter-of-fact air such as he remembered to have observed when reading a printed volume of Domestic State Papers; and it would sound well to have tried five ciphers on the inscription and found a possible solution at last. That same day Mr Grope wrote at length to the Minerva, describing his discovery of the new cavern and the inscription, and giving his two explanations. For himself, he said, he believed in the Latin version, though he was aware that he had the disadvantage of differing from his learned friend Sir H—— T——. In deference to that gentleman’s opinion, he had compared the writing with many ciphers in use in the sixteenth century, and now submitted the result to the attention of the scientific world.

The learned were only too willing to discuss it, and several letters on the subject appeared in the next number of the Minerva. One gentleman approved the deciphered version; others proposed solutions of their own, much more absurd than any which Mr Grope had thought of. Next week a letter from Sir H—— T—— himself was printed, in which he expressed his opinion in favour of Mr Grope’s second explanation. Mr Grope and his new cavern had become famous. The intellectual world at Q—— itself was greatly impressed with the erudition of his researches. Fashion and science ran into each other a good deal at Q——; and there were some needlessly pretty toilets among the party of friends whom Mr Grope conducted to visit the muddy recesses of his new cavern. There was also a geologist, but he rather despised the inscription as being too recent, and talked chiefly about eyeless fish. The young ladies, knowing little of either the Duke of Norfolk or the eyeless fish, explored the gloomy recesses, and filled them with the sounds of laughter and fun. Only one young lady observed to her companions: ‘I shouldn’t wonder if Mr Grope is wrong after all.’

A few days later the antiquary met at an evening party, the son of an old inhabitant of Q——, who had been dead for some years, but whom Mr Grope had formerly known. He had known the son too, who was now a Fellow of his college. He was a little blunt, bullet-headed man, and when presently the subject of the Q—— bone-cave came up, he said what he thought without any preface.

‘I fancy, Mr Grope, you’re wrong about that inscription after all. I suppose you never heard my father speak of old Truck the smuggler?’

‘No; I did not,’ said Mr Grope, concealing his feelings, which were not of the most comfortable description.

‘Old Truck the smuggling captain,’ continued the little man, ‘used that cave pretty freely. That was before the geologists had appropriated it, and the barrier was put up. I should not wonder if he sometimes wrote hints to his friends on the walls.’

‘But I should not imagine that your father knew any one who lived in 1571,’ said Mr Grope.

‘Ah! but is the 1571 a date at all? That’s the question,’ said the Fellow. ‘My father took an interest in that old sinner, and saw something of Truck in his last days in the cottage. The sea has encroached now and washed most of it away. And Truck left him his curiosities—stuffed birds and china, and his old order-books and log-books. I’ll look them out. I would lay a wager that he wrote that inscription.’

‘It will take very strong evidence to make that believed,’ said Mr Grope. Nevertheless he felt uneasy, and heartily wished that the Fellow had not happened to take the matter up. Meanwhile the Fellow searched for Truck’s relics, which were now in the possession of his brother; and the next morning saw him in Mr Grope’s study together with an antique volume, not bound in ‘brass and wild boar’s hide,’ but in dilapidated leather, with a musty-fusty odour half a century old. With a sinking heart, Mr Grope felt, when first he looked at it, that the historical grandeur of his inscription was about to fall to the ground.

‘This was Truck’s note-book,’ said the Fellow. ‘Look here, Mr Grope.’ And there, on the first page, written in a manner which implied that the paper had been rather greasy from the first, were the words ‘Capt Truck.’

‘And the cave at Q—— is mentioned pretty often among his hieroglyphics,’ said the ruthless Fellow, turning over the dirty pages. ‘“Directions to be left in the Q—— cave.” I expect there are others there besides the inscription you found. Look here; don’t you think this must be the identical one?’ And he pointed to some lines which ran obliquely across a page: ‘Directions left for Scroggs. Follow to Normandy. Rum 20, brandy 15, 71 kegs to return.’

Mr Grope stood stricken to the soul, but not a muscle of his face moved. He silently compared this newest discovery with the copy he had made in his note-book, in the first flush of his hopes.

There was no denying that this was the true solution of the mystery, and that the Ridolfi Plot was nowhere. It was singular that neither he himself, nor Sir H—— T——, nor the other gentlemen who had written on the subject, had thought of the possibility of the man in the cave using straightforward English. At least Mr Grope erred in good company; but still he felt that he should have to bear most of the ridicule, as the originator of the historical theory, and the investigator who had attacked the smuggler’s prosaic inscription with five ciphers used by queens and princes in the sixteenth century. However, he was determined not to shew his chagrin, and even asked the Fellow to dine with him that evening.

Mr Grope wrote honourably to the Minerva to explain the true state of the case. He acknowledged that further research proved both himself and his friend Sir H—— T—— to be mistaken on the subject of the writing in the cave at Q——. Then he mentioned Truck and the smugglers, and gave the new interpretation, not without a groan as he wrote ‘rum’ where formerly he had written ‘rosarum mensis.’ He also communicated with Sir H—— on the subject, and Sir H—— dryly replied that he wondered the writing should look as if it were three hundred years old, when it was really only sixty or seventy. No more was said about it in the Minerva. And as to the Q—— people, of course they politely refrained from letting Mr Grope see that they laughed at him, all except a bluff old personage who exclaimed: ‘So your conspirator against Queen Elizabeth turned out to be an old smuggler after all!’

The wounds of Mr Grope’s vanity began to heal in time. They smarted somewhat when the course of winter lectures at the Q—— AthenÆum was opened, for he had intended to hold forth triumphantly on the bone-cave and the historical inscription. And they bled afresh in the following spring when the annual fashionable pilgrimage to the cave took place. Still the high-priest has not deserted the temple, for Mr Grope is not easily put down; and he often repairs to his old subterranean haunts and picks up bones and flint implements. But the entrance to the new cavern containing the inscription has been mysteriously filled up again; and the gnome who is the nominal custodian of the cave whispers to a subordinate official of the Q—— AthenÆum: ‘’Twas Mr Grope, he closed it ’imself, I’ll warrant. You see, he couldn’t abide it, after that there mistake of ’is that they laughed at so. Smugglers ’iding there; and Mr Grope, he takes the writin’ for summut to do with grand folks that lived three ’undred year ago!’

Poor Mr Grope! That was all that came of the inscription in the Q—— bone-cave.