"No doubt you will think me fanciful--but I had already established a
kind of _connection_. I had put together two links of a great chain.
There was a boat lying on a seacoast, and not far from the boat was a
parchment--_not a paper_--with a skull depicted on it. You will, of
course, ask 'where is the connection?' I reply that the skull, or
death's-head, is the well-known emblem of the pirate. The flag of the
death's-head is hoisted in all engagements.
"I have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper. Parchment
is durable--almost imperishable. Matters of little moment are rarely
consigned to parchment; since, for the mere ordinary purposes of
drawing or writing, it is not nearly so well adapted as paper. This
reflection suggested some meaning--some relevancy--in the deaths-head.
I did not fail to observe, also, the _form_ of the parchment. Although
one of its corners had been, by some accident, destroyed, it could be
seen that the original form was oblong. It was just such a slip,
indeed, as might have been chosen for a memorandum--for a record of
something to be long remembered and carefully preserved."
"But," I interposed, "you say that the skull, was _not_ upon the
parchment when you made the drawing of the beetle. How then do you
trace any connection between the boat and the skull--since this
latter, according to your own admission, must have been designed (God
only knows how or by whom) at some period subsequent to your sketching
the _scarab?¦us_?"
"Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery; although the secret, at this
point, I had comparatively little difficulty in solving.
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