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"You remember that when I went to the table, for the purpose of making
a sketch of the beetle, I found no paper where it was usually kept.
I looked in the drawer, and found none there. I searched my pockets,
hoping to find an old letter, when my hand fell upon the parchment. I
thus detail the precise mode in which it came into my possession; for
the circumstances impressed me with peculiar force.
"No doubt you will think me fanciful--but I had already established a
kind of connexion. I had put together two links of a great chain. There
was a boat lying upon a sea-coast, and not far from the boat was a
parchment--not a paper--with a skull depicted upon it. You will,
of course, ask 'where is the connexion?' 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 death's-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."
155
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