Chapter Twenty Two. The Jesuits’ Cipher

Directly I saw the half-faded parchments I recognised that the cipher which those early Jesuit writers had used was a very simple one. This, I may explain to the uninitiated, is not so difficult a matter to observe as they might perhaps think. Some very simple considerations guided me to this conclusion. For instance, unlike the cipher in use by the founder of St. Bruno, there were practically no figures in the manuscripts, and by that I gathered the cipher was complete in the alphabet in use, and did not refer to any book, like the institutes of St. Bruno. The one thing that does puzzle and sometimes confound experts is to adopt a book, as Bruno Delganni had done, and then to put in the record simply figures that related to letters in this volume.

That, however, is not always quite safe. The expert looks in the manuscript for the letter that appears most often, and he decides, perhaps, that that is “e,” the second “i,” and so on according to the letters that are most frequently used in the language in which he believes the document to be written, and by this simple means he can often construct the entire code alphabet.

On some such method I too proceeded with the inspection of the manuscripts in question, and found that the letter that appeared the most often therein was a certain letter that was not often used in any language. I, therefore, turned the alphabet round thus:

ZYXWVUTSRQP

abcdefghijk

It was, unfortunately, useless. Later I tried the alphabet in Portuguese form, and I saw with joy that we need not trouble at all about the rolls of explanation which Camille Velasquon had brought, and which were laid on the table beside us, but that I had really hit on the right solution—at the very start—without a glance at those cipher keys that had come to us from Mexico. The Jesuits had first merely reversed the order of the letters, and instead of writing “A” when they should have done, they had put “Z” in its place, and so on right through the alphabet, making the language of the base Portuguese, and not Spanish or English, as we had all expected at first.

The cunning old sons of St. Ignatius of Loyola had, however, not left their secret quite so plain as that. They had also added to it, to disguise it the better, a trick which most of us learn when we are boys at school. This consisted in adding to every syllable another rhyming with it but beginning with “p.” Thus to put “Venha Ca” (come here) they wrote “Venpenhapa Capa,” or if in English, “comepum herepere,” and this, when written to any extent, is really quite bewildering to any student of manuscripts unaccustomed to it.

Luckily, I was well up to it, and so there and then I caught hold of the first manuscript that came to hand, and although I was as ignorant of Portuguese as the man in the street I managed in a very few hours to write out the text of the documents, and this in turn was translated by Mr Cooper-Nassington, who had, it seemed, learned the language when a youth, his father having been consul in Lisbon.

To our surprise the communication turned out to be a letter from the Father Provincial of the Monastery of St. Stanislaus in the city of Mexico, and was addressed to a firm of merchants in the interior, at Xingu, a settlement we found marked on a map. As it is a very good specimen of Jesuit composition and politeness I will give here the English translation of it. Thus:

“AMDG.

“Friends and Gentlemen, Loyal Sons of the Church.

“From many years’ experience of your methods, and from much pleasant and profitable intercourse with your honourable and honoured house, I know that it is always agreeable for you to have an opportunity of showing your hospitable and generous feelings towards strangers in general, and more particularly to those who visit our country for the purpose of making discoveries and of extending the sphere of their knowledge. I do not hesitate, therefore, to take advantage of the opportunity which the journey of our good Father Thomas Bonaventure and his three worthy companions presents to recommend them to your friendship and protection in the scientific and business enterprise which they have undertaken, in order to obtain those natural productions and wealth which render our province a classic land in the history of animals and plants, no less than in the record of hardly-won gold.

“Hence it comes about that in this illustrious enterprise to Tangikano, which the illustrious (élites) travellers have undertaken, I much wish that they may find in you all that the limited resources of the place allow, not only that whatever difficulties they encounter may be removed, but that you may be able to render less irksome the labours and privations which they must necessarily endure. Indeed, for men like them, devoted to our Holy Faith, stars of knowledge, pioneers of fortune to be used for the good of the souls of others, it must in a country like ours be easy to find amongst our most exquisite productions means to gratify them.

“I, therefore, hope, and above all pray, that you may be led to fulfil my wishes in the attentions you pay to Father Thomas Bonaventure and his three companions, and thus give me another proof of your esteem and friendship.

“So I remain, Your friend and obedient Servant, João (Father Provincial), LDS.”

“Well, there is not much in that, is there?” said José, with a queer little grimace as he finished taking down the translation from the Prior’s rapid and incisive dictation.

“No,” I observed; “it only shows that the Jesuits got wind of the existence of great wealth at Tangikano, and so, with their customary subtlety, they fitted out an expedition to recover it under the guise of a noble quest for science. Still, that is something, isn’t it? It proves to us the thing was thought worth doing centuries ago by men on the spot who must have had a better knowledge of what the district contained than any of us to-day can have.”

“True,” replied the Prior thoughtfully, passing a hand reflectively across his forehead. “It shows us, too, that we are on the right track, and that their musty-looking old manuscripts may have a very real message about the sacred lake, so I vote that, although the night is so very far advanced, we push on with our researches. Do you agree, Glynn?”

“Yes,” I replied at once, for my interest too was now most keenly excited, and thereupon we all three of us bent down to work again and tackled the next document.

This proved to be an account of the journey of the same Father Thomas Bonaventure and his three companions mentioned in the letter when they had passed Xingu and had drawn within a few miles of the wonderful lake itself. It was written in the same kind of cipher as the other and in the same florid terms. In our opinion it was put on record at the Monastery of St. Stanislaus in the city of Mexico at the same time as the Father Provincial’s letter.

Stripped of its verbiage, it related how the four explorers had duly arrived at the village of Tangikano, and, in order not to excite suspicion, had pretended they had come for a missionary effort which would last several weeks. By this means they won the entire confidence of the settlement, the population of which consisted of about forty persons, of whom twenty were slaves, and the remainder free Indians and negroes in the employ of the principal resident, a Spaniard named Pedro Barra, who kept them engaged attending to a large number of cattle and horses.

The priests, indeed, gave a very pretty picture of the state of things in existence on this estate. It was as follows:—

“The slaves appeared contented and happy, as slaves generally do. Every evening at sunset they came to bid good-night to Senhor Pedro and ourselves, a similar salutation taking place when they first met us in the morning. As a rule, the master would be seated in a comfortable easy-chair on the verandah, and each passed with a salutation suited to his age or station. The Indians would be generally content with ‘Boa noite’ (good-night), the younger ones and most of the women and children, both Indians and slaves, would hold out their hand, saying: ‘Sua benção’ (your blessing), to which he would reply, ‘Deos te benços’ (God bless you) making at the same time the sign of the cross. Others—and these were mostly the old negroes—would gravely repeat: ‘Louvado seja of nome do Senhor Jesu Christo’ (Blessed be the name of the Lord Jesus Christ), to which he would reply with equal gravity: ‘Para sempre’ (for ever). Children of all classes here (they went on) never meet their parents in the morning or leave them at night without in the same manner asking their blessing, and they do the same invariably of every stranger who enters the house. In fact, it is there the common salutation of children and inferiors, and has a very pleasing effect.”

But all the time they lingered here, however, it was easy to see that the four Jesuits ached to be off to the sacred lake. Even when they described these idyllic scenes they harked off to this one all-absorbing subject, and recounted their conviction what fine guides these same slaves would make, and, later, told openly how they hastened to bargain with the Senhor Pedro Barra for the services of some of them to row them in a canoe up the river that led to the foot of the lake itself. Even the sight of this muddy and pestilential stream stirred in them emotions of admiration and awe. They might have been near the Amazon itself, have gazed on the stream of this mighty and far-famed river, and have let their imaginations wander to its sources in the distant Andes, to the Peruvian Incas of old, to the silver mountains of Potosi, and the gold-seeking Spaniards and wild Indians who once inhabited the country about its thousand sources rather than the sluggish stream of Tangikano.

“Yet this is all proof of what fabulous wealth they were sure the lake contained,” argued Casteno. “Let’s bear with the laboured way they recount their adventures. After all, if what we have heard here in England is true there were riches enough ahead of them to justify all their impatience and enthusiasm.”

So we bent to the rather tedious work of translation again, and learned how at length Father Thomas Bonaventure and his companions, having arrived at the height of the dry season, heard that at length the waters of the sacred lake were sufficiently low to justify them to travel thither on an excursion, the ostensible reason of which was to kill alligators. They found that there were two ways to reach the place—overland in nearly a direct line, or by a zigzag course up the river, which way was the one they chose.

Accordingly, they were aroused at midnight, and got into the canoe with three negroes, who worked their craft steadily day after day, until at length they reached the narrowest part of the stream. Hitherto they had been charmed with the beauty of the vegetation, which surpassed everything they had ever seen before. Here is the description:

“At the water’s edge were numerous flowering shrubs, often completely covered with convolvuli and passion flowers, whilst every dead or half rotten tree was clothed with parasites of singular forms or bearing beautiful flowers. Nor were there wanting animated figures to complete the picture, for brilliant scarlet and yellow macaws flew continually overhead, while screaming parrots and paroquets were passing from branch to branch in search of food.

“Now, however, the scenery was much more gloomy; the tall trees closed overhead so as to keep out every sunbeam. Even the palms were twisted and bent in various contortions, so that we sometimes could hardly pass beneath, and sunken logs often lay across from bank to bank, compelling us to get out of the canoe and to use all our exertions to force our clumsy craft over.

“After some hours and hours of very hard and disagreeable work we reached the end of the navigable water. Then we left the negroes and immediately set off on foot over an extensive plain, which was in some places completely bare, and in others thinly clothed with low trees. There could not have been a greater contrast than between the scene on the river and that which we then entered upon. The one was all luxuriance and verdure, the other as brown and as barren as could be—a marsh now parched up by the burning sun and covered with tufts of a wiry grass, with here and there rushes and prickly, sensitive plants and a few pretty little flowers occasionally growing up amongst them.

“In the end we arrived at the lake just as the day was fading. The only building there was a small reed shed, and this we promptly took possession of, unfastening the baggage we carried and piecing together a hand-dredger. We were now half frantic with excitement to put to the test all the wonderful stories we had heard about the bed of the lake, and so we immediately set to work on its slimy depths, and quickly passed our net arrangement over a space of a hundred yards at a point where the water seemed to have receded the most. Then we drew up and examined our captures.

“To our amazement and delight we discovered that we had, amongst other things of course, actually retrieved a number of golden ornaments of a very ancient pattern, including a frontlet and a tiny statue, which the most casual examination showed was wrought out of solid gold!”

So the information they had had was really true! The Lake of Sacred Treasure was really worthy of its name, and in its slimy depths were actually deposited the riches of countless generations of ignorant yet devoted heathens!

Breathless with delight, they again fitted up their apparatus. Again they essayed to test the wonders of that strange and silent pool, but they got no farther than the brink of the water.

All at once, the parchment record stated, a loud commanding voice rang out across its misty expanse, and an Englishman suddenly appeared in the twilight in front of them in a magnificent boat rowed from stem to stern by Indians.

“Begone! begone!” he cried; “all this water is mine. I have bought it. I will let none of you touch it—no, not one!”

And before the Jesuits could utter a word in answer they found themselves suddenly surrounded by Indians, who had crept up to them unawares, and they were dragged rapidly into the depths of a dark, and seemingly impenetrable, network of caves some distance off.

And that was the last they saw of the lake of submerged treasure.