The Giant Raft. Part IL, The Cryptogram. By Jules Verne.
Translated by W. J. Gordon. (Sampson Low and Co.)—M. Verne has given a characteristic development to his story. We left the hero in the serious dilemma of having fallen into the hands of justice, on account of a crime for which he had been condemned to die, some twenty years before. His doom is certain, unless the truth can be extorted from the enemy to whom his danger is due, this enemy carrying about with him the confession of the real culprit. The fellow is killed, and his body, with the confession concealed upon it, falls into the Amazon. Then comes the scene of searching for it in the bed of the river, a scene which M. Verne describes, after his manner, with a familiarity as easy as if the channel of the Amazon were as well known to him as his own bath-room. The confession is found, but it is in cypher, a "cryptogram," and who shall discover the key ? The writer here, of course, encounters the difficulty of coming into rivalry with Edgar Poe's " Gold Bug," a difficulty which he frankly meets, by letting us see that the cryptogram which is now to be inter- preted has been constructed on a different principle from that which had been used by the buccaneers in Poe's story. On the whole, we think that M. Verne does not come up to his original here. Poe's hero finds out the secret by sheer ingenuity ; the ingenious person who works out the cryptogram is indebted in a great degree to acci- dent for his success. Still, the thing is' well done, and any reader who will have the patience to follow the working of the problem carefully will be entertained.
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