CHAPTER THREE

"It's obviously ancient Icelandic," the professor said, "but there's a secret in it, and I'll find out what it is, or else ... "

After a few moments, he spoke to me hurriedly, saying, "Sit down there and write. I'm going to tell you the letters of our alphabet that match these Icelandic characters. Then, we'll see what we find then. But, be sure you don't make any mistakes!"

He began speaking. I listened as carefully as I could. The letters were called out, and formed this confusing group of words:

m.rnlls esreuel seecJde

sgtssmf unteief niedrke

kt,samn atrateS Saodrm

emtnaeI nuaect rrilSa

Atvaar .nscrc ieaabs

Ccdrmi eeutul frantu

Dt,iac oseibo KediiY

When this work was done, my uncle grabbed the sheet of paper I had been writing on, and examined it attentively for a long time.

"What does it mean?" he kept repeating to himself. "This is a cryptogram, which means that its meaning is hidden behind the letters, which have been purposely confused. If we arrange the words in the correct order, we will discover the meaning!" My uncle continued to carefully examine the paper, "Arne Saknussemm!" he cried out. "He was a scientist, one of the only scientists of that time. They made discoveries that can only be described as amazing. Why wouldn't Saknussemm have hidden an incredible invention behind this confusing cryptogram? That must be it. That is it."

"Perhaps so," I answered, "but why would he have to hide his incredible invention?"

"Why? Why? How should I know? Anyway, I'm going to discover the secret of this document. I won't eat or sleep till I've done it. And neither will you, Axel," he declared.

I'm lucky I ate two dinners today! I told myself.

"First of all," my uncle said, "we must find out what language the message is written in. That shouldn't be hard. The language looks a bit like Latin, the language that was commonly used among scientists during that time."

Enjoy yourself, uncle, I thought. If you can discover it, you're a clever man.

I stopped listening to his words, as I was looking at a charming picture on the wall—a picture of Grauben, my uncle's goddaughter, who was living with the old professor, as well. She was visiting one of her relatives in Altona and her absence made me very sad because—I can admit it now—she and I loved each other with good German patience. We were engaged, although we were keeping such information from my uncle, who, as a scientist, could not understand such emotions. Grauben, a lovely young woman with blond hair and blue eyes, was rather quiet and serious, but she loved me. As for me, I respected and loved her dearly.

As I stared at her picture, I remembered the days when she helped me arrange my uncle's important stones. She had a great deal of knowledge about Earth studies, as well. She liked solving difficult scientific problems. We had so many delightful hours studying together! We would often go out walking together, holding hands as we went. Just then, my thoughts were interrupted by my uncle's eager exclamation.

"Yes," he said, "I must first write the letters of the sentence vertically instead of horizontally to discover the meaning." He then turned to me, "Let's see what it looks like, Axel. Take this paper and write a sentence on it, any sentence. But instead of writing the words in the usual way, write them vertically."

I understood what he meant and immediately wrote the following:

I o a G n

l u r r

o , l a

v m i u

e y n b

y d g e

"Good," the professor said after reading this. "And now, write down the horizontal rows, one after another."

I did as he said, with this result:

IoaGn lurr. o,la vmiu eynb ydge

"Excellent!" he said, grabbing the paper from me. "I don't know the sentence you wrote," he continued, "but I can read it by taking the first letter of each word, then the second, then the third, and so on."

Then, to his great surprise, and even more to mine, he read aloud: "I love you, my darling Grauben."

"What!" he exclaimed.

Yes, I had written that embarrassing sentence without realizing what I was doing.

"Ah, so you love Grauben, do you?" my uncle asked seriously, remembering that I was his nephew.

"Yes ... no ... " I said quietly.

"So you love Grauben," he repeated. "Now, let's use this method to discover the secret of this mysterious Icelandic writing."

He then forgot what I had just foolishly admitted, and continued with the discovery. I was then told to write down the next set of words, and this was what was found:

messunkaSenrA.ieefdoK.segnittamurtn

ecertserrette,rotaivsadua,ednecsedsadne

lacartniiiluJsiratracSarbmutabiledmek

meretarcsiluco Y sleffenSI

I must admit that I was excited when I came to the end. Those letters had seemed meaningless to me as I wrote them, but I expected to hear the professor read off a fantastic Latin sentence.

I was quite confused at what happened instead: he shook the table violently with anger.

"No, that's not it!" he shouted. "It doesn't make sense!"

Then, he ran across the study, went down the stairs, rushed out of the house, and hurried away as quickly as he could.

(end of section)