ife. I had resolved
to cut the letters from their hiding-place so that I might make them
up into tiny rolls, small enough to hide in my pistol cartridges. Very
carefully I cut the threads which bound the leather flaps of the satchel
together. I worked standing up, with the satchel in my bunk. I could
hardly have been seen from any point. In a few moments the letters were
in my hands. They were small sheets of paper, each about four inches
square. They were nine in number, all different. They were covered with
a neat cipher very different from the not very neat, not quite formed
hand of the Duke himself. What the cipher was, I did not know. It was
one of the many figure ciphers then in use. I learned long afterwards
that the figures which frequently occurred in them stood for King
James II. Such as they were, those cipher letters made a good deal of
difference to many thousands of people then living contentedly at home.

As soon as I had removed them, I rolled them up very carefully into
pistol cartridges from which I drew the charges. I was just going to
throw away the powder, when I thought, "No, I'll put the powder back.
It'll make the fraud more difficult to detect." So I put the powder back
with great care. Then I searched my mind for something with which to
seal up the cartridge wads over the powder. I could think of nothing at
all, till I remembered the tar-seams at my feet. I dug up a fragment of
tar-seam from the dark corners of the cabin under my bunk. Then I lit my
lamp with my little pocket tinder-box, so that I could heat the tar as I
needed it. It took me a long time to finish the cartridges properly; but
I flatter myself that I made neat jobs of them. I was trained to neat
habits by my father. The Oulton seamen had given me a taste for doing
clever neat work, such as plaits or pointing, so that I was not such a
bungler at delicate handicraft as most boys of my age. I even took the
trouble to hide the tar marks on my wads by smearing wetted gunpowder
all over them. When I had hidden all the letters, I wrote out a few
pencilled notes upon leaves neatly cut from my pocket-book. I wrote a
varying arrangement of ciphers on each leaf, in the neatest hand I could
command. I always made neat figures; but as I had not touched a pen for
nearly a month, I was out of practice. Still, I did very creditably. I
am quite sure that my neat ciphers gave the usurper James a very trying
week of continual study. I daresay the w