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confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use the glass. Of course,
the 'forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes' could allude to nothing but
elevation above the visible horizon, since the horizontal direction was
clearly indicated by the words, 'northeast and by north.' This latter
direction I at once established by means of a pocket-compass; then,
pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of forty-one degrees of
elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it cautiously up or down,
until my attention was arrested by a circular rift or opening in the
foliage of a large tree that overtopped its fellows in the distance.
In the centre of this rift I perceived a white spot, but could not, at
first, distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I
again looked, and now made it out to be a human skull.
"Upon this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved;
for the phrase 'main branch, seventh limb, east side,' could refer only
to the position of the skull upon the tree, while 'shoot from the left
eye of the death's head' admitted, also, of but one interpretation, in
regard to a search for buried treasure. I perceived that the design was
to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that a bee-line,
or, in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest point of
the trunk through 'the shot,' (or the spot where the bullet fell,) and
thence extended to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate a definite
point--and beneath this point I thought it at least possible that a
deposit of value lay concealed."
173
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