surrenders itself to its cruel instincts, and it was feared that on this
occasion it would do justice with its own hands.
What a night it was for the passengers from the fazenda! Masters and
servants had been affected by the blow! Were not the servants of the
fazenda members of one family? Every one of them would watch over the
safety of Yaquita and her people! On the bank of the Rio Negro there
was a constant coming and going of the natives, evidently excited by
the arrest of Joam Dacosta, and who could say to what excesses these
half-barbarous men might be led?
The time, however, passed without any demonstration against the jangada.
On the morrow, the 26th of August, as soon as the sun rose, Manoel and
Fragoso, who had never left Benito for an instant during this terrible
night, attempted to distract his attention from his despair. After
taking him aside they made him understand that there was no time to be
lost--that they must make up their minds to act.
“Benito,” said Manoel, “pull yourself together! Be a man again! Be a son
again!”
“My father!” exclaimed Benito. “I have killed him!”
“No!” replied Manoel. “With heaven’s help it is possible that all may
not be lost!”
“Listen to us, Mr. Benito,” said Fragoso.
The young man, passing his hand over his eyes, made a violent effort to
collect himself.
“Benito,” continued Manoel, “Torres never gave a hint to put us on the
track of his past life. We therefore cannot tell who was the author of
the crime of Tijuco, or under what conditions it was committed. To try
in that direction is to lose our time.”
“And time presses!” added Fragoso.
“Besides,” said Manoel, “suppose we do find out who this companion
of Torres was, he is dead, and he could not testify in any way to the
innocence of Joam Dacosta. But it is none the less certain that the
proof of this innocence exists, and there is not room to doubt the
existence of a document which Torres was anxious to make the subject
of a bargain. He told us so himself. The document is a complete avowal
written in the handwriting of the culprit, which relates the attack in
its smallest details, and which clears our father! Yes! a hundred times,
yes! The document exists!”
“But Torres does not exist!” groaned Benito, “and the document has
perished with him!”
“Wait, and don’t despair yet!” answered Manoel. “You remember under what
circumstances we made the acquaintance of Torres? It was in the depths
of the forest of Iquitos. He was in pursuit of a monkey which had stolen
a metal case, which it so strangely kept, and the chase had lasted a
couple of hours when the monkey fell to our guns. Now, do you think that
it was for the few pieces of gold contained in the case that Torres was
in such a fury to recover it? and do you not remember the extraordinary
satisfaction which he displayed when we gave him back the case which we
had taken out of the monkey’s paw?”
“Yes! yes!” answered Benito. “This case which I held--which I gave back
to him! Perhaps it contained----”
“It is more than probable! It is certain!” replied Manoel.
“And I beg to add,” said Fragoso, “for now the fact recurs to my memory,
that during the time you were at Ega I remained on board, at
Lina’s advice, to keep an eye on Torres, and I saw him--yes, I saw
him--reading, and again reading, an old faded paper, and muttering words
which I could not understand.”
“That was the document!” exclaimed Benito, who snatched at the hope--the
only one that was left. “But this document; had he not put it in some
place of security?”
“No,” answered Manoel--“no; it was too precious for Torres to dream of
parting with it. He was bound to carry it always about with him, and
doubtless in that very case.”
“Wait! wait, Manoel!” exclaimed Benito; “I remember--yes, I remember.
During the struggle, at the first blow I struck Torres in his chest, my
manchetta was stopped by some hard substance under his poncho, like a
plate of metal----”
“That was the case!” said Fragoso.
“Yes,” replied Manoel; “doubt is impossible! That was the case; it was
in his breast-pocket.”
“But the corpse of Torres?”
“We will recover it!”
“But the paper! The water will have stained it, perhaps destroyed it, or
rendered it undecipherable!”
“Why,” answered Manoel, “if the metal case which held it was
water-tight?”
“Manoel,” replied Benito, who seized on the last hope, “you are right!
The corpse of Torres must be recovered! We will ransack the whole of
this part of the river, if necessary, but we will recover it!”
The pilot Araujo was then summoned and informed of what they were going
to do.
“Good!” replied he; “I know all the eddies and currents where the Rio
Negro and the Amazon join, and we shall succeed in recovering the body.
Let us take two pirogues, two ubas, a dozen of our Indians, and make a
start.”
Padre Passanha was then coming out of Yaquita’s room.
Benito went to him, and in a few words told him what they were going to
do to get possession of the document. “Say nothing to my mother or my
sister,” he added; “if this last hope fails it will kill them!”
“Go, my lad, go,” replied Passanha, “and may God help you in your
search.”
Five minutes afterward the four boats started from the raft. After
descending the Rio Negro they arrived near the bank of the Amazon, at
the very place where Torres, mortally wounded, had disappeared beneath
the waters of the stream.
CHAPTER VIII. THE FIRST SEARCH
THE SEARCH had to commence at once, and that for two weighty reasons.
The first of these was--and this was a question of life or death--that
this proof of Joam Dacosta’s innocence must be produced before the
arrival of the order from Rio Janeiro. Once the identity of the prisoner
was established, it was impossible that such an order could be other
than the order for his execution.
The second was that the body of Torres should be got out of the water
as quickly as possible so as to regain undamaged the metal case and the
paper it ought to contain.
At this juncture Araujo displayed not only zeal and intelligence, but
also a perfect knowledge of the state of the river at its confluence
with the Rio Negro.
“If Torres,” he said to the young men, “had been from the first carried
away by the current, we should have to drag the river throughout a
large area, for we shall have a good many days to wait for his body to
reappear on the surface through the effects of decomposition.”
“We cannot do that,” replied Manoel. “This very day we ought to
succeed.”
“If, on the contrary,” continued the pilot, “the corpse has got stuck
among the reeds and vegetation at the foot of the bank, we shall not be
an hour before we find it.”
“To work, then!” answered Benito.
There was but one way of working. The boats approached the bank, and
the Indians, furnished with long poles, began to sound every part of the
river at the base of the bluff which had served for the scene of combat.
The place had been easily recognized. A track of blood stained the
declivity in its chalky part, and ran perpendicularly down it into the
water; and there many a clot scattered on the reeds indicated the very
spot where the corpse had disappeared.
About fifty feet down stream a point jutted out from the riverside and
kept back the waters in a kind of eddy, as in a large basin. There was
no current whatever near the shore, and the reeds shot up out of the
river unbent. Every hope then existed that Torres’ body had not been
carried away by the main stream. Where the bed of the river showed
sufficient slope, it was perhaps possible for the corpse to have rolled
several feet along the ridge, and even there no effect of the current
could be traced.
The ubas and the pirogues, dividing the work among them, limited the
field of their researches to the extreme edge of the eddy, and from
the circumference to the center the crews’ long poles left not a single
point unexplored. But no amount of sounding discovered the body of the
adventurer, neither among the clumps of reeds nor on the bottom of the
river, whose slope was then carefully examined.
Two hours after the work had begun they had been led to think that
the body, having probably struck against the declivity, had fallen off
obliquely and rolled beyond the limits of this eddy, where the action of
the current commenced to be felt.
“But that is no reason why we should despair,” said Manoel, “still less
why we should give up our search.”
“Will it be necessary,” exclaimed Benito, “to search the river
throughout its breadth and its length?”
“Throughout its breadth, perhaps,” answered Araujo, “throughout its
length, no--fortunately.”
“And why?” asked Manoel.
“Because the Amazon, about a mile away from its junction with the Rio
Negro, makes a sudden bend, and at the same time its bed rises, so that
there is a kind of natural barrier, well known to sailors as the Bar of
Frias, which things floating near the surface are alone able to clear.
In short, the currents are ponded back, and they cannot possibly have
any effect over this depression.”
This was fortunate, it must be admitted. But was Araujo mistaken? The
old pilot of the Amazon could be relied on. For the thirty years that he
had followed his profession the crossing of the Bar of Frias, where the
current was increased in force by its decrease in depth, had often given
him trouble. The narrowness of the channel and the elevation of the bed
made the passage exceedingly difficult, and many a raft had there come
to grief.
And so Araujo was right in declaring that if the corpse of Torres was
still retained by its weight on the sandy bed of the river, it could
not have been dragged over the bar. It is true that later on, when,
on account of the expansion of the gases, it would again rise to
the surface, the current would bear it away, and it would then be
irrevocably lost down the stream, a long way beyond the obstruction. But
this purely physical effect would not take place for several days.
They could not have applied to a man who was more skillful or more
conversant with the locality than Araujo, and when he affirmed that the
body could not have been borne out of the narrow channel for more than a
mile or so, they were sure to recover it if they thoroughly sounded that
portion of the river.
Not an island, not an islet, checked the course of the Amazon in these
parts. Hence, when the foot of the two banks had been visited up to the
bar, it was in the bed itself, about five hundred feet in width, that
more careful investigations had to be commenced.
The way the work was conducted was this. The boats taking the right and
left of the Amazon lay alongside the banks. The reeds and vegetation
were tried with the poles. Of the smallest ledges in the banks in
which a body could rest, not one escaped the scrutiny of Araujo and his
Indians.
But all this labor produced no result, and half the day had elapsed
without the body being brought to the surface of the stream.
An hour’s rest was given to the Indians. During this time they partook
of some refreshment, and then they returned to their task.
Four of the boats, in charge of the pilot, Benito, Fragoso, and Manoel,
divided the river between the Rio Negro and the Bar of Frias into four
portions. They set to work to explore its very bed. In certain places
the poles proved insufficient to thoroughly search among the deeps, and
hence a few dredges--or rather harrows, made of stones and old iron,
bound round with a solid bar--were taken on board, and when the boats
had pushed off these rakes were thrown in and the river bottom stirred
up in every direction.
It was in this difficult task that Benito and his companions were
employed till the evening. The ubas and pirogues, worked by the oars,
traversed the whole surface of the river up to the bar of Frias.
There had been moments of excitement during this spell of work, when
the harrows, catching in something at the bottom, offered some slight
resistance. They were then hauled up, but in place of the body so
eagerly searched for, there would appear only heavy stones or tufts of
herbage which they had dragged from their sandy bed. No one, however,
had an idea of giving up the enterprise. They none of them thought of
themselves in this work of salvation. Benito, Manoel, Araujo had not
even to stir up the Indians or to encourage them. The gallant fellows
knew that they were working for the fazender of Iquitos--for the man
whom they loved, for the chief of the excellent family who treated their
servants so well.
Yes; and so they would have passed the night in dragging the river. Of
every minute lost all knew the value.
A little before the sun disappeared, Araujo, finding it useless to
continue his operations in the gloom, gave the signal for the boats to
join company and return together to the confluence of the Rio Negro and
regain the jangada.
The work so carefully and intelligently conducted was not, however, at
an end.
Manoel and Fragoso, as they came back, dared not mention their ill
success before Benito. They feared that the disappointment would only
force him to some act of despair.
But neither courage nor coolness deserted the young fellow; he was
determined to follow to the end this supreme effort to save the honor
and the life of his father, and he it was who addressed his companions,
and said: “To-morrow we will try again, and under better conditions if
possible.”
“Yes,” answered Manoel; “you are right, Benito. We can do better. We
cannot pretend to have entirely explored the river along the whole of
the banks and over the whole of its bed.”
“No; we cannot have done that,” replied Araujo; “and I maintain what I
said--that the body of Torres is there, and that it is there because it
has not been carried away, because it could not be drawn over the Bar of
Frias, and because it will take many days before it rises to the surface
and floats down the stream. Yes, it is there, and not a demijohn of
tafia will pass my lips until I find it!”
This affirmation from the pilot was worth a good deal, and was of a
hope-inspiring nature.
However, Benito, who did not care so much for words as he did for
things, thought proper to reply, “Yes, Araujo; the body of Torres is in
the river, and we shall find it if----”
“If?” said the pilot.
“If it has not become the prey of the alligators!”
Manoel and Fragoso waited anxiously for Araujo’s reply.
The pilot was silent for a few moments; they felt that he was reflecting
before he spoke. “Mr. Benito,” he said at length, “I am not in the habit
of speaking lightly. I had the same idea as you; but listen. During
the ten hours we have been at work have you seen a single cayman in the
river?”
“Not one,” said Fragoso.
“If you have not seen one,” continued the pilot, “it was because there
were none to see, for these animals have nothing to keep them in the
white waters when, a quarter of a mile off, there are large stretches
of the black waters, which they so greatly prefer. When the raft was
attacked by some of these creatures it was in a part where there was
no place for them to flee to. Here it is quite different. Go to the Rio
Negro, and there you will see caymans by the score. Had Torres’ body
fallen into that tributary there might be no chance of recovering it.
But it was in the Amazon that it was lost, and in the Amazon it will be
found.”
Benito, relieved from his fears, took the pilot’s hand and shook it, and
contented himself with the reply, “To-morrow, my friends!”
Ten minutes later they were all on board the jangada. During the day
Yaquit had passed some hours with her husband. But before she started,
and when she saw neither the pilot, nor Manoel, nor Benito, nor the
boats, she had guessed the search on which they had gone, but she said
nothing to Joam Dacosta, as she hoped that in the morning she would be
able to inform him of their success.
But when Benito set foot on the raft she perceived that their search had
been fruitless. However, she advanced toward him. “Nothing?” she asked.
“Nothing,” replied Benito. “But the morrow is left to us.”
The members of the family retired to their rooms, and nothing more was
said as to what had passed.
Manoel tried to make Benito lie down, so as to take a few hours’ rest.
“What is the good of that?” asked Benito. “Do you think I could sleep?”
CHAPTER IX. THE SECOND ATTEMPT
ON THE MORROW, the 27th of August, Benito took Manoel apart, before the
sun had risen, and said to him: “Our yesterday’s search was vain. If we
begin again under the same conditions we may be just as unlucky.”
“We must do so, however,” replied Manoel.
“Yes,” continued Benito; “but suppose we do not find the body, can you
tell me how long it will be before it rises to the surface?”
“If Torres,” answered Manoel, “had fallen into the water living, and
not mortally wounded, it would take five or six days; but as he only
disappeared after being so wounded, perhaps two or three days would be
enough to bring him up again.”
This answer of Manoel, which was quite correct, requires some
explanation. Every human body which falls into the water will float if
equilibrium is established between its density and that of its liquid
bed. This is well known to be the fact, even when a person does not know
how to swim. Under such circumstances, if you are entirely submerged,
and only keep your mouth and nose away from the water, you are sure to
float. But this is not generally done. The first movement of a drowning
man is to try and hold as much as he can of himself above the water; he
holds up his head and lifts up his arms, and these parts of his body,
being no longer supported by the liquid, do not lose that amount of
weight which they would do if completely immersed. Hence an excess of
weight, and eventually entire submersion, for the water makes its way
to the lungs through the mouth, takes the place of the air which fills
them, and the body sinks to the bottom.
On the other hand, when the man who falls into the water is already dead
the conditions are different, and more favorable for his floating, for
then the movements of which we have spoken are checked, and the liquid
does not make its way to the lungs so copiously, as there is no attempt
to respire, and he is consequently more likely to promptly reappear.
Manoel then was right in drawing the distinction between the man who
falls into the water living and the man who falls into it dead. In the
one case the return to the surface takes much longer than in the other.
The reappearance of the body after an immersion more or less prolonged
is always determined by the decomposition, which causes the gases to
form. These bring about the expansion of the cellular tissues, the
volume augments and the weight decreases, and then, weighing less than
the water it displaces, the body attains the proper conditions for
floating.
“And thus,” continued Manoel, “supposing the conditions continue
favorable, and Torres did not live after he fell into the water, if the
decomposition is not modified by circumstances which we cannot foresee,
he will not reappear before three days.”
“We have not got three days,” answered Benito. “We cannot wait, you
know; we must try again, and in some new way.”
“What can you do?” answered Manoel.
“Plunge down myself beneath the waters,” replied Benito, “and search
with my eyes--with my hands.”
“Plunge in a hundred times--a thousand times!” exclaimed Manoel. “So be
it. I think, like you, that we ought to go straight at what we want, and
not struggle on with poles and drags like a blind man who only works by
touch. I also think that we cannot wait three days. But to jump in,
come up again, and go down again will give only a short period for
the exploration. No; it will never do, and we shall only risk a second
failure.”
“Have you no other plan to propose, Manoel?” asked Benito, looking
earnestly at his friend.
“Well, listen. There is what would seem to be a Providential
circumstance that may be of use to us.”
“What is that?”
“Yesterday, as we hurried through Manaos, I noticed that they were
repairing one of the quays on the bank of the Rio Negro. The submarine
works were being carried on with the aid of a diving-dress. Let us
borrow, or hire, or buy, at any price, this apparatus, and then we may
resume our researches under more favorable conditions.”
“Tell Araujo, Fragoso, and our men, and let us be off,” was the instant
reply of Benito.
The pilot and the barber were informed of the decision with regard to
Manoel’s project. Both were ordered to go with the four boats and the
Indians to the basin of Frias, and there to wait for the two young men.
Manoel and Benito started off without losing a moment, and reached the
quay at Manaos. There they offered the contractor such a price that he
put the apparatus at their service for the whole day.
“Will you not have one of my men,” he asked, “to help you?”
“Give us your foreman and one of his mates to work the air-pump,”
replied Manoel.
“But who is going to wear the diving-dress?”
“I am,” answered Benito.
“You!” exclaimed Manoel.
“I intend to do so.”
It was useless to resist.
An hour afterward the raft and all the instruments necessary for the
enterprise had drifted down to the bank where the boats were waiting.
The diving-dress is well known. By its means men can descend beneath the
waters and remain there a certain time without the action of the lungs
being in any way injured. The diver is clothed in a waterproof suit of
India rubber, and his feet are attached to leaden shoes, which allow him
to retain his upright position beneath the surface. At the collar of
the dress, and about the height of the neck, there is fitted a collar
of copper, on which is screwed a metal globe with a glass front. In this
globe the diver places his head, which he can move about at his ease.
To the globe are attached two pipes; one used for carrying off the air
ejected from the lungs, and which is unfit for respiration, and the
other in communication with a pump worked on the raft, and bringing
in the fresh air. When the diver is at work the raft remains immovable
above him; when the diver moves about on the bottom of the river the
raft follows his movements, or he follows those of the raft, according
to his convenience.
These diving-dresses are now much improved, and are less dangerous than
formerly. The man beneath the liquid mass can easily bear the additional
pressure, and if anything was to be feared below the waters it was
rather some cayman who might there be met with. But, as had been
observed by Araujo, not one of these amphibians had been seen, and they
are well known to prefer the black waters of the tributaries of
the Amazon. Besides, in case of danger, the diver has always his
check-string fastened to the raft, and at the least warning can be
quickly hauled to the surface.
Benito, invariably very cool once his resolution was taken, commenced
to put his idea into execution, and got into the diving dress. His head
disappeared in the metal globe, his hand grasped a sort of iron spear
with which to stir up the vegetation and detritus accumulated in the
river bed, and on his giving the signal he was lowered into the stream.
The men on the raft immediately commenced to work the air-pump, while
four Indians from the jangada, under the orders of Araujo, gently
propelled it with their long poles in the desired direction.
The two pirogues, commanded one by Fragoso, the other by Manoel,
escorted the raft, and held themselves ready to start in any direction,
should Benito find the corpse of Torres and again bring it to the
surface of the Amazon.
CHAPTER X. A CANNON SHOT
BENITO THEN HAD disappeared beneath the vast sheet which still covered
the corpse of the adventurer. Ah! If he had had the power to divert the
waters of the river, to turn them into vapor, or to drain them off--if
he could have made the Frias basin dry down stream, from the bar up to
the influx of the Rio Negro, the case hidden in Torres’ clothes would
already have been in his hand! His father’s innocence would have been
recognized! Joam Dacosta, restored to liberty, would have again started
on the descent of the river, and what terrible trials would have been
avoided!
Benito had reached the bottom. His heavy shoes made the gravel on the
bed crunch beneath him. He was in some ten or fifteen feet of water, at
the base of the cliff, which was here very steep, and at the very spot
where Torres had disappeared.
Near him was a tangled mass of reeds and twigs and aquatic plants, all
laced together, which assuredly during the researches of the previous
day no pole could have penetrated. It was consequently possible that the
body was entangled among the submarine shrubs, and still in the place
where it had originally fallen.
Hereabouts, thanks to the eddy produced by the prolongation of one of
the spurs running out into the stream, the current was absolutely -nil-.
Benito guided his movements by those of the raft, which the long poles
of the Indians kept just over his head.
The light penetrated deep through the clear waters, and the magnificent
sun, shining in a cloudless sky, shot its rays down into them unchecked.
Under ordinary conditions, at a depth of some twenty feet in water,
the view becomes exceedingly blurred, but here the waters seemed to be
impregnated with a luminous fluid, and Benito was able to descend still
lower without the darkness concealing the river bed.
The young man slowly made his way along the bank. With his iron-shod
spear he probed the plants and rubbish accumulated along its foot.
Flocks of fish, if we can use such an expression, escaped on all sides
from the dense thickets like flocks of birds. It seemed as though the
thousand pieces of a broken mirror glimmered through the waters. At the
same time scores of crustaceans scampered over the sand, like huge ants
hurrying from their hills.
Notwithstanding that Benito did not leave a single point of the river
unexplored, he never caught sight of the object of his search. He
noticed, however, that the slope of the river bed was very abrupt, and
he concluded that Torres had rolled beyond the eddy toward the center
of the stream. If so, he would probably still recover the body, for the
current could hardly touch it at the depth, which was already great,
and seemed sensibly to increase. Benito then resolved to pursue his
investigations on the side where he had begun to probe the vegetation.
This was why he continued to advance in that direction, and the raft
had to follow him during a quarter of an hour, as had been previously
arranged.
The quarter of an hour had elapsed, and Benito had found nothing. He
felt the need of ascending to the surface, so as to once more experience
those physiological conditions in which he could recoup his strength. In
certain spots, where the depth of the river necessitated it, he had had
to descend about thirty feet. He had thus to support a pressure almost
equal to an atmosphere, with the result of the physical fatigue and
mental agitation which attack those who are not used to this kind of
work. Benito then pulled the communication cord, and the men on the raft
commenced to haul him in, but they worked slowly, taking a minute to
draw him up two or three feet so as not to produce in his internal
organs the dreadful effects of decompression.
As soon as the young man had set foot on the raft the metallic sphere of
the diving-dress was raised, and he took a long breath and sat down to
rest.
The pirogues immediately rowed alongside. Manoel, Fragoso, and Araujo
came close to him, waiting for him to speak.
“Well?” asked Manoel.
“Still nothing! Nothing!”
“Have you not seen a trace?”
“Not one!”
“Shall I go down now?”
“No, Manoel,” answered Benito; “I have begun; I know where to go. Let me
do it!”
Benito then explained to the pilot that his intention was to visit the
lower part of the bank up to the Bar of Frias, for there the slope had
perhaps stopped the corpse, if, floating between the two streams, it had
in the least degree been affected by the current. But first he wanted to
skirt the bank and carefully explore a sort of hole formed in the slope
of the bed, to the bottom of which the poles had evidently not been
able to penetrate. Araujo approved of this plan, and made the necessary
preparations.
Manoel gave Benito a little advice. “As you want to pursue your search
on that side,” he said, “the raft will have to go over there obliquely;
but mind what you are doing, Benito. That is much deeper than where
you have been yet; it may be fifty or sixty feet, and you will have to
support a pressure of quite two atmospheres. Only venture with extreme
caution, or you may lose your presence of mind, or no longer know where
you are or what to do. If your head feels as if in a vice, and your ears
tingle, do not hesitate to give us the signal, and we will at once
haul you up. You can then begin again if you like, as you will have got
accustomed to move about in the deeper parts of the river.”
Benito promised to attend to these hints, of which he recognized the
importance. He was particularly struck with the fact that his presence
of mind might abandon him at the very moment he wanted it most.
Benito shook hands with Manoel; the sphere of the diving-dress was again
screwed to his neck, the pump began to work, and the diver once more
disappeared beneath the stream.
The raft was then taken about forty feet along the left bank, but as it
moved toward the center of the river the current increased in strength,
the ubas were moored, and the rowers kept it from drifting, so as only
to allow it to advance with extreme slowness.
Benito descended very gently, and again found himself on the firm sand.
When his heels touched the ground it could be seen, by the length of the
haulage cord, that he was at a depth of some sixty-five or seventy
feet. He was therefore in a considerable hole, excavated far below the
ordinary level.
The liquid medium was more obscure, but the limpidity of these
transparent waters still allowed the light to penetrate sufficiently for
Benito to distinguish the objects scattered on the bed of the river,
and to approach them with some safety. Besides, the sand, sprinkled with
mica flakes, seemed to form a sort of reflector, and the very grains
could be counted glittering like luminous dust.
Benito moved on, examining and sounding the smallest cavities with his
spear. He continued to advance very slowly; the communication cord was
paid out, and as the pipes which served for the inlet and outlet of
the air were never tightened, the pump was worked under the proper
conditions.
Benito turned off so as to reach the middle of the bed of the Amazon,
where there was the greatest depression. Sometimes profound obscurity
thickened around him, and then he could see nothing, so feeble was the
light; but this was a purely passing phenomenon, and due to the raft,
which, floating above his head, intercepted the solar rays and made the
night replace the day. An instant afterward the huge shadow would be
dissipated, and the reflection of the sands appear again in full force.
All the time Benito was going deeper. He felt the increase of the
pressure with which his body was wrapped by the liquid mass. His
respiration became less easy; the retractibility of his organs no
longer worked with as much ease as in the midst of an atmosphere more
conveniently adapted for them. And so he found himself under the action
of physiological effects to which he was unaccustomed. The rumbling grew
louder in his ears, but as his thought was always lucid, as he felt
that the action of his brain was quite clear--even a little more so than
usual--he delayed giving the signal for return, and continued to go down
deeper still.
Suddenly, in the subdued light which surrounded him, his attention was
attracted by a confused mass. It seemed to take the form of a corpse,
entangled beneath a clump of aquatic plants. Intense excitement seized
him. He stepped toward the mass; with his spear he felt it. It was the
carcass of a huge cayman, already reduced to a skeleton, and which the
current of the Rio Negro had swept into the bed of the Amazon. Benito
recoiled, and, in spite of the assertions of the pilot, the thought
recurred to him that some living cayman might even then be met with in
the deeps near the Bar of Frias!
But he repelled the idea, and continued his progress, so as to reach the
bottom of the depression.
And now he had arrived at a depth of from eighty to a hundred feet, and
consequently was experiencing a pressure of three atmospheres. If,
then, this cavity was also drawn blank, he would have to suspend his
researches.
Experience has shown that the extreme limit for such submarine
explorations lies between a hundred and twenty and a hundred and thirty
feet, and that below this there is great danger, the human organism not
only being hindered from performing his functions under such a pressure,
but the apparatus failing to keep up a sufficient supply of air with the
desirable regularity.
But Benito was resolved to go as far as his mental powers and physical
energies would let him. By some strange presentiment he was drawn toward
this abyss; it seemed to him as though the corpse was very likely to
have rolled to the bottom of the hole, and that Torres, if he had any
heavy things about him, such as a belt containing either money or arms,
would have sunk to the very lowest point. Of a sudden, in a deep hollow,
he saw a body through the gloom! Yes! A corpse, still clothed, stretched
out like a man asleep, with his arms folded under his head!
Was that Torres? In the obscurity, then very dense, he found it
difficult to see; but it was a human body that lay there, less than ten
paces off, and perfectly motionless!
A sharp pang shot through Benito. His heart, for an instant, ceased to
beat. He thought he was going to lose consciousness. By a supreme effort
he recovered himself. He stepped toward the corpse.
Suddenly a shock as violent as unexpected made his whole frame vibrate!
A long whip seemed to twine round his body, and in spite of the thick
diving-dress he felt himself lashed again and again.
“A gymnotus!” he said.
It was the only word that passed his lips.
In fact, it was a -“puraque,”- the name given by the Brazilians to the
gymnotus, or electric snake, which had just attacked him.
It is well known that the gymnotus is a kind of eel, with a blackish,
slimy skin, furnished along the back and tail with an apparatus
composed of plates joined by vertical lamellæ, and acted on by nerves of
considerable power. This apparatus is endowed with singular electrical
properties, and is apt to produce very formidable results. Some of these
gymnotuses are about the length of a common snake, others are about ten
feet long, while others, which, however, are rare, even reach fifteen or
twenty feet, and are from eight to ten inches in diameter.
Gymnotuses are plentiful enough both in the Amazon and its tributaries;
and it was one of these living coils, about ten feet long, which, after
uncurving itself like a bow, again attacked the diver.
Benito knew what he had to fear from this formidable animal. His clothes
were powerless to protect him. The discharges of the gymnotus, at first
somewhat weak, become more and more violent, and there would come a time
when, exhausted by the shocks, he would be rendered powerless.
Benito, unable to resist the blows, half-dropped upon the sand. His
limbs were becoming paralyzed little by little under the electric
influences of the gymnotus, which lightly touched his body as it wrapped
him in its folds. His arms even he could not lift, and soon his spear
escaped him, and his hand had not strength enough left to pull the cord
and give the signal.
Benito felt that he was lost. Neither Manoel nor his companions could
suspect the horrible combat which was going on beneath them between the
formidable puraque and the unhappy diver, who only fought to suffer,
without any power of defending himself.
And that at the moment when a body--the body of Torres without a
doubt!--had just met his view.
By a supreme instinct of self-preservation Benito uttered a cry. His
voice was lost in the metallic sphere from which not a sound could
escape!
And now the puraque redoubled its attacks; it gave forth shock after
shock, which made Benito writhe on the sand like the sections of a
divided worm, and his muscles were wrenched again and again beneath the
living lash.
Benito thought that all was over; his eyes grew dim, his limbs began to
stiffen.
But before he quite lost his power of sight and reason he became the
witness of a phenomenon, unexpected, inexplicable, and marvelous in the
extreme.
A deadened roar resounded through the liquid depths. It was like a
thunder-clap, the reverberations of which rolled along the river bed,
then violently agitated by the electrical discharges of the gymnotus.
Benito felt himself bathed as it were in the dreadful booming which
found an echo in the very deepest of the river depths.
And then a last cry escaped him, for fearful was the vision which
appeared before his eyes!
The corpse of the drowned man which had been stretched on the sand
arose! The undulations of the water lifted up the arms, and they swayed
about as if with some peculiar animation. Convulsive throbs made the
movement of the corpse still more alarming.
It was indeed the body of Torres. One of the suns rays shot down to
it through the liquid mass, and Benito recognized the bloated, ashy
features of the scoundrel who fell by his own hand, and whose last
breath had left him beneath the waters.
And while Benito could not make a single movement with his paralyzed
limbs, while his heavy shoes kept him down as if he had been nailed to
the sand, the corpse straightened itself up, the head swayed to and fro,
and disentangling itself from the hole in which it had been kept by a
mass of aquatic weeds, it slowly ascended to the surface of the Amazon.
CHAPTER XI. THE CONTENTS OF THE CASE
WHAT WAS it that had happened? A purely physical phenomenon, of which
the following is the explanation.
The gunboat Santa Ana, bound for Manaos, had come up the river and
passed the bar at Frias. Just before she reached the -embouchure- of the
Rio Negro she hoisted her colors and saluted the Brazilian flag. At the
report vibrations were produced along the surface of the stream, and
these vibrations making their way down to the bottom of the river, had
been sufficient to raise the corpse of Torres, already lightened by the
commencement of its decomposition and the distension of its cellular
system. The body of the drowned man had in the ordinary course risen to
the surface of the water.
This well-known phenomenon explains the reappearance of the corpse, but
it must be admitted that the arrival of the Santa Ana was a fortunate
coincidence.
By a shout from Manoel, repeated by all his companions, one of the
pirogues was immediately steered for the body, while the diver was at
the same time hauled up to the raft.
Great was Manoel’s emotion when Benito, drawn on to the platform,
was laid there in a state of complete inertia, not a single exterior
movement betraying that he still lived.
Was not this a second corpse which the waters of the Amazon had given
up?
As quickly as possible the diving-dress was taken off him.
Benito had entirely lost consciousness beneath the violent shocks of the
gymnotus.
Manoel, distracted, called to him, breathed into him, and endeavored to
recover the heart’s pulsation.
“It beats! It beats!” he exclaimed.
Yes! Benito’s heart did still beat, and in a few minutes Manoel’s
efforts restored him to life.
“The body! the Body!”
Such were the first words, the only ones which escaped from Benito’s
lips.
“There it is!” answered Fragoso, pointing to a pirogue then coming up to
the raft with the corpse.
“But what has been the matter, Benito?” asked Manoel. “Has it been the
want of air?”
“No!” said Benito; “a puraque attacked me! But the noise? the
detonation?”
“A cannon shot!” replied Manoel. “It was the cannon shot which brought
the corpse to the surface.”
At this moment the pirogue came up to the raft with the body of Torres,
which had been taken on board by the Indians. His sojourn in the water
had not disfigured him very much. He was easily recognizable, and there
was no doubt as to his identity.
Fragoso, kneeling down in the pirogue, had already begun to undo the
clothes of the drowned man, which came away in fragments.
At the moment Torres’ right arm, which was now left bare, attracted
his attention. On it there appeared the distinct scar of an old wound
produced by a blow from a knife.
“That scar!” exclaimed Fragoso. “But--that is good! I remember now----”
“What?” demanded Manoel.
“A quarrel! Yes! a quarrel I witnessed in the province of Madeira three
years ago. How could I have forgotten it! This Torres was then a captain
of the woods. Ah! I know now where I had seen him, the scoundrel!”
“That does not matter to us now!” cried Benito. “The case! the case! Has
he still got that?” and Benito was about to tear away the last coverings
of the corpse to get at it.
Manoel stopped him.
“One moment, Benito,” he said; and then, turning to the men on the
raft who did not belong to the jangada, and whose evidence could not be
suspected at any future time:
“Just take note, my friends,” he said, “of what we are doing here, so
that you can relate before the magistrate what has passed.”
The men came up to the pirogue.
Fragoso undid the belt which encircled the body of Torres underneath the
torn poncho, and feeling his breast-pocket, exclaimed:
“The case!”
A cry of joy escaped from Benito. He stretched forward to seize the
case, to make sure than it contained----
“No!” again interrupted Manoel, whose coolness did not forsake him. “It
is necessary that not the slightest possible doubt should exist in the
mind of the magistrate! It is better that disinterested witnesses should
affirm that this case was really found on the corpse of Torres!”
“You are right,” replied Benito.
“My friend,” said Manoel to the foreman of the raft, “just feel in the
pocket of the waistcoat.”
The foreman obeyed. He drew forth a metal case, with the cover screwed
on, and which seemed to have suffered in no way from its sojourn in the
water.
“The paper! Is the paper still inside?” exclaimed Benito, who could not
contain himself.
“It is for the magistrate to open this case!” answered Manoel. “To him
alone belongs the duty of verifying that the document was found within
it.”
“Yes, yes. Again you are right, Manoel,” said Benito. “To Manaos, my
friends--to Manaos!”
Benito, Manoel, Fragoso, and the foreman who held the case, immediately
jumped into one of the pirogues, and were starting off, when Fragoso
said:
“And the corpse?”
The pirogue stopped.
In fact, the Indians had already thrown back the body into the water,
and it was drifting away down the river.
“Torres was only a scoundrel,” said Benito. “If I had to fight him, it
was God that struck him, and his body ought not to go unburied!”
And so orders were given to the second pirogue to recover the corpse,
and take it to the bank to await its burial.
But at the same moment a flock of birds of prey, which skimmed along the
surface of the stream, pounced on the floating body. They were urubus,
a kind of small vulture, with naked necks and long claws, and black as
crows. In South America they are known as gallinazos, and their voracity
is unparalleled. The body, torn open by their beaks, gave forth the
gases which inflated it, its density increased, it sank down little
by little, and for the last time what remained of Torres disappeared
beneath the waters of the Amazon.
Ten minutes afterward the pirogue arrived at Manaos. Benito and his
companions jumped ashore, and hurried through the streets of the town.
In a few minutes they had reached the dwelling of Judge Jarriuez, and
informed him, through one of his servants, that they wished to see him
immediately.
The judge ordered them to be shown into his study.
There Manoel recounted all that had passed, from the moment when Torres
had been killed until the moment when the case had been found on his
corpse, and taken from his breast-pocket by the foreman.
Although this recital was of a nature to corroborate all that Joam
Dacosta had said on the subject of Torres, and of the bargain which he
had endeavored to make, Judge Jarriquez could not restrain a smile of
incredulity.
“There is the case, sir,” said Manoel. “For not a single instant has
it been in our hands, and the man who gives it to you is he who took it
from the body of Torres.”
The magistrate took the case and examined it with care, turning it over
and over as though it were made of some precious material. Then he shook
it, and a few coins inside sounded with a metallic ring. Did not, then,
the case contain the document which had been so much sought after--the
document written in the very hand of the true author of the crime of
Tijuco, and which Torres had wished to sell at such an ignoble price
to Joam Dacosta? Was this material proof of the convict’s innocence
irrevocably lost?
We can easily imagine the violent agitation which had seized upon the
spectators of this scene. Benito could scarcely utter a word, he felt
his heart ready to burst. “Open it, sir! open the case!” he at last
exclaimed, in a broken voice.
Judge Jarriquez began to unscrew the lid; then, when the cover was
removed, he turned up the case, and from it a few pieces of gold dropped
out and rolled on the table.
“But the paper! the paper!” again gasped Benito, who clutched hold of
the table to save himself from falling.
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