Jules Verne

“ But had not Judge Jarriquez also had his share in this rehabilitation of an innocent man? If, in spite of all the shrewdness of his analytical talents, he had not been able to read the document, which was absolutely undecipherable to any one who had not got the key, had he not at any rate discovered the system on which the cryptogram was composed? Without him what could have been done with only the name of Ortega to reconstitute the number which the author of the crime and Torres, both of whom were dead, alone knew? ”

“ The Indians and the negroes ran into their huts and cabins. As they were shutting the door:
"And Minha?" said Manoel.
"She is not there!" replied Lina, who had just run to her mistress' room.
"Good heavens! where is she?" exclaimed her mother, and they all shouted at once:
"Himha! Minha!"
No reply.
"There she is, on the bow of the jangada!" said Benito.
"Minha!" shouted Manoel.
The two young men, and Fragoso and Joam Garral, thinking no more of danger, rushed out of the house, guns in hand.
Scarcely were they outside when two of the alligators made a half turn and ran toward them. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Manoel and Fragoso, by a similar movement, quickly drew their weapons.
"Three against one!" said Torres.
"No! one against one!" answered Benito.
"Really! I should have thought an assassination would have better suited an assassin's son!"
"Torres!" exclaimed Benito, "defend yourself, or I will kill you like a mad dog!"
"Mad! so be it!" answered Torres. "But I bite, Benito Dacosta, and beware of the wounds!"
And then again grasping his manchetta, he put himself on guard and ready to attack his enemy. ”

“ Benito!" said Fragoso, "who ought to wish all the world to marry him!"
"They are right, sir," said Yaquita. "I also drink to your marriage, and may you be as happy as Minha and Manoel, and as I and your father have been!"
"As you always will be, it is to be hoped," said Torres, drinking a glass of port without having pledged anybody. "All here have their happiness in their own hands." ”

“ But when the heavy work, so to speak, had been completed, Minha intervened with:
"Father, now your care has inclosed and covered us, you must allow us to arrange our dwelling to please ourselves. The outside belongs to you, the inside to us. Mother and I would like it to be as though our house at the fazenda went with us on the journey, so as to make you fancy that we had never left Iquitos!"
"Do just as you like, Minha," replied Joam Garral, smiling in the sad way he often did. ”

“ Yes, Manoel; though I am of somewhat the same way of thinking as my brother. But even if we do not know their names, the islands of our great river are truly splendid! See how they rest under the shadows of those gigantic palm-trees with their drooping leaves! And the girdle of reeds which encircles them through which a pirogue can with difficulty make its way! And the mangrove trees, whose fantastic roots buttress them to the bank like the claws of some gigantic crab! Yes, the islands are beautiful, but, beautiful as they are, they cannot equal the one we have made our own! ”

“ Manoel and Benito, with their eyes open, but chatting and smoking with apparent indifference, walked about the central part of the craft awaiting the hour of repose.
All at once Manoel stopped Benito with his hand and said:
"What a queer smell! Am I wrong? Do you not notice it?"
"One would say that it was the odor of burning musk!" replied Benito. "There ought to be some alligators asleep on the neighboring beach!"
"Well, nature has done wisely in allowing them so to betray themselves."
"Yes," said Benito, "it is fortunate, for they are sufficiently formidable creatures!" ”

“ Just forget for a few hours that you are engaged."
"Not for an hour--not for an instant!" said Manoel.
"Perhaps you will if Minha orders you?"
"Minha will not order me."
"Who knows?" said Lina, laughing.
"Lina is right," answered Minha, who held out her hand to Manoel. "Try to forget! Forget! my brother requires it. All is broken off! As long as this walk lasts we are not engaged: I am no more than the sister of Benito! You are only my friend!"
"To be sure," said Benito.
"Bravo! bravo! there are only strangers here," said the young mulatto, clapping her hands. ”

“ You ask the impossible!"
"Impossible, sir?" answered Manoel. "An innocent man has been branded as guilty, and Joam Dacosta is to lose his life and his honor while you hold in your hands the material proof of his innocence! That is what is impossible!"
"Ah! young man!" exclaimed Jarriquez, "who told you, after all, that Torres did not tell a lie? Who told you that he really did have in his hands a document written by the author of the crime? that this paper was the document, and that this document refers to Joam Dacosta?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am the honest man whom a legal error unjustly doomed to death twenty-five years ago in the place of the true culprit! That I am quite innocent I swear before Heaven, once for all, on your heads, my children, and on the head of your mother!"
"All communication between you and yours is now forbidden," said the chief of the police. "You are my prisoner, Joam Garral, and I will rigorously execute my warrant."
Joam restrained by a gesture his dismayed children and servants.
"Let the justice of man be done while we wait for the justice of God!" ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Minha made Manoel admire the natural wonders which could not be found in their simplicity in the more civilized provinces of the east. He listened to her more with his eyes than his ears, for the cries and the songs of these thousands of birds were every now and then so penetrating that he was not able to hear what she said. The noisy laughter of Lina was alone sufficiently shrill to ring out with its joyous note above every kind of clucking, chirping, hooting, whistling, and cooing. ”

“ The door opened. Joam Dacosta saw his wife, his son, and Manoel enter the room.
"Ah! Joam, my Joam!" exclaimed Yaquita.
"Yaquita! my wife! my children!" replied the prisoner, who opened his arms and pressed them to his heart.
"My Joam, innocent!"
"Innocent and avenged!" said Benito.
"Avenged? What do you mean?"
"Torres is dead, father; killed by my hand!"
"Dead!--Torres!--Dead!" gasped Joam Dacosta. "My son! You have ruined me!" ”

“ By an irresistible impulse Benito seized his father and drew him toward the window.
Joam Dacosta struggled from his son's grasp and recoiled a second time.
"To fly," he answered, in the tone of a man whose resolution was unalterable, "is to dishonor myself, and you with me! It would be a confession of my guilt! Of my own free will I surrendered myself to my country's judges, and I will await their decision, whatever that decision may be!"
"But the presumptions on which you trusted are insufficient," replied Manoel, "and the material proof of your innocence is still wanting! ”

“ Torres heard nothing of all these sounds, which form, as it were, the complex voice of the forests of the New World. Reclining at the foot of a magnificent tree, he did not even admire the lofty boughs of that _"pao ferro,"_ or iron wood, with its somber bark, hard as the metal which it replaces in the weapon and utensil of the Indian savage. No. Lost in thought, the captain of the woods turned the curious paper again and again between his fingers. With the cipher, of which he had the secret, he assigned to each letter its true value. ”

“ Benito, generally so good-humored, stopped as he looked at Manoel, and a cloud came over his countenance.
“I know why,” he said; “it is about Torres.”
“Yes, Benito.”
“And I also wish to speak to you.”
“You have then noticed his attention to Minha?” said Manoel, turning pale.
“Ah! It is not a feeling of jealousy, though, that exasperates you against such a man?” said Benito quickly.
“No!” replied Manoel. “Decidedly not! Heaven forbid I should do such an injury to the girl who is to become my wife. No, Benito! She holds the adventurer in horror! ”

“ When the two girls entered Ega they were at first much astonished.
"What a large town!" said Minha.
"What houses! what people!" replied Lina, whose eyes seemed to have expanded so that she might see better.
"Rather!" said Benito laughingly. "More than fifteen hundred inhabitants! Two hundred houses at the very least! Some of them with a first floor! And two or three streets! Genuine streets!"
"My dear Manoel!" said Minha, "do protect us against my brother! ”

“ Of all the prehensile-tailed monkeys which haunt the forests of the Upper Amazon—graceful sahuis, horned sapajous, gray-coated monos, sagouins which seem to wear a mask on their grimacing faces—the guariba is without doubt the most eccentric. Of sociable disposition, and not very savage, differing therein very greatly from the mucura, who is as ferocious as he is foul, he delights in company, and generally travels in troops. ”

“ At these words of Yaquita Joam made a movement which he could not repress.
"My dear," continued Yaquita, "with Minha, with our two sons, Benito and Manoel, with you, how I should like to see Brazil, and to journey down this splendid river, even to the provinces on the seacoast through which it runs! It seems to me that the separation would be so much less cruel! As we came back we should revisit our daughter in her house with her second mother. I would not think of her as gone I knew not where. I would fancy myself much less a stranger to the doings of her life." ”

“ And Lina pointed to a liana of the _"cipos"_ kind, twisted round a gigantic sensitive mimosa, whose leaves, light as feathers, shut up at the least disturbance.
"Well?" said Benito.
"I proposed," replied Minha, "that we try to follow that liana to its very end."
"It is an idea, and it is an object!" observed Benito, "to follow this liana, no matter what may be the obstacles, thickets, underwood, rocks, brooks, torrents, to let nothing stop us, not even----"
"Certainly, you are right, brother!" said Minha; "Lina is a trifle absurd." ”

“ Of all those who took up the study of the puzzle, Judge Jarriquez was one of the most to be pitied. By a natural association of ideas, he also joined in the general opinion that the document referred to the affair at Tijuco, and that it had been written by the hand of the guilty man, and exonerated Joam Dacosta. And so he put even more ardor into his search for the key. It was not only the art for art’s sake which guided him, it was a sentiment of justice, of pity toward a man suffering under an unjust condemnation. ”

“ Manoel came out alone; his face glowed with generous resolution.
Going up to Yaquita, he said, “My mother!” to Minha he said, “My wife!” and to Benito he said, “My brother!” and, turning toward Lina and Fragoso, he said to all, “To-morrow!”
He knew all that had passed between Joam Garral and Torres. He knew that, counting on the protection of Judge Ribeiro, by means of a correspondence which he had had with him for a year past without speaking of it to his people, Joam Garral had at last succeeded in clearing himself and convincing him of his innocence. ”

“ In fact, had Torres been alive, Benito could not tell but that, in some way or another, from pity or for reward, he would have finished by handing over the document. Would not Torres, whom nothing could compromise, have been persuaded to speak, had money been brought to bear upon him? Would not the long-sought-for proof have been furnished to the judge? Yes, undoubtedly! And the only man who could have furnished this evidence had been killed through Benito!
Such was what the wretched man continually repeated to his mother, to Manoel, and to himself. ”

“ Benito and Manoel thought that while thus speaking Torres looked toward Minha.
"And what should prevent you marrying?" replied Padre Passanha; "at Belem you could find a wife whose age would suit yours, and it would be possible perhaps for you to settle in that town. That would be better than this wandering life, of which, up to the present, you have not made so very much."
"You are right, padre," answered Torres; "I do not say no. Besides the example is contagious. Seeing all these young couples gives me rather a longing for marriage. ”