Several blows were then interchanged, but nothing decisive was done. The

ever silent gaze of Benito pierced the eyes of Torres like a sword

blade thrust to his very heart. Visibly the scoundrel began to quail. He

recoiled little by little, pressed back by his implacable foe, who was

more determined on taking the life of his father’s denouncer than in

defending his own. To strike was all that Benito longed for; to parry

was all that the other now attempted to do.

Soon Torres saw himself thrust to the very edge of the bank, at a spot

where, slightly scooped away, it overhung the river. He perceived the

danger; he tried to retake the offensive and regain the lost ground. His

agitation increased, his looks grew livid. At length he was obliged to

stoop beneath the arm which threatened him.

“Die, then!” exclaimed Benito.

The blow was struck full on its chest, but the point of the manchetta

was stopped by a hard substance hidden beneath the poncho of the

adventurer.

Benito renewed his attack, and Torres, whose return thrust did not touch

his adversary, felt himself lost. He was again obliged to retreat. Then

he would have shouted--shouted that the life of Joam Dacosta depended on

his own! He had not time!

A second thrust of the manchetta pierced his heart. He fell backward,

and the ground suddenly failing him, he was precipitated down the cliff.

As a last effort his hands convulsively clutched at a clump of reeds,

but they could not stop him, and he disappeared beneath the waters of

the river.

Benito was supported on Manoel’s shoulder; Fragoso grasped his hands.

He would not even give his companions time to dress his wound, which was

very slight.

“To the jangada!” he said, “to the jangada!”

Manoel and Fragoso with deep emotion followed him without speaking a

word.

A quarter of an hour afterward the three reached the bank to which

the raft was moored. Benito and Manoel rushed into the room where were

Yaquita and Minha, and told them all that had passed.

“My son!” “My brother!”

The words were uttered at the same moment.

“To the prison!” said Benito.

“Yes! Come! come!” replied Yaquita.

Benito, followed by Manoel, hurried along his mother, and half an hour

later they arrived before the prison.

Owing to the order previously given by Judge Jarriquez they were

immediately admitted, and conducted to the chamber occupied by the

prisoner.

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!”

CHAPTER VII.

RESOLUTIONS

A few hours later the whole family had returned to the raft, and were

assembled in the large room. All were there, except the prisoner, on

whom the last blow had just fallen. Benito was quite overwhelmed, and

accused himself of having destroyed his father, and had it not been

for the entreaties of Yaquita, of his sister, of Padre Passanha, and of

Manoel, the distracted youth would in the first moments of despair have

probably made away with himself. But he was never allowed to get out

of sight; he was never left alone. And besides, how could he have acted

otherwise? Ah! why had not Joam Dacosta told him all before he left the

jangada? Why had he refrained from speaking, except before a judge, of

this material proof of his innocence? Why, in his interview with Manoel

after the expulsion of Torres, had he been silent about the document

which the adventurer pretended to hold in his hands? But, after all,

what faith ought he to place in what Torres had said? Could he be

certain that such a document was in the rascal’s possession?

Whatever might be the reason, the family now knew everything, and

that from the lips of Joam Dacosta himself. They knew that Torres

had declared that the proof of the innocence of the convict of Tijuco

actually existed; that the document had been written by the very hand

of the author of the attack; that the criminal, seized by remorse at the

moment of his death, had intrusted it to his companion, Torres; and

that he, instead of fulfilling the wishes of the dying man, had made the

handing over of the document an excuse for extortion. But they knew also

that Torres had just been killed, and that his body was engulfed in the

waters of the Amazon, and that he died without even mentioning the name

of the guilty man.

Unless he was saved by a miracle, Joam Dacosta might now be considered

as irrevocably lost. The death of Judge Ribeiro on the one hand,

the death of Torres on the other, were blows from which he could

not recover! It should here be said that public opinion at Manaos,

unreasoning as it always is, was all against he prisoner. The unexpected

arrest of Joam Dacosta had revived the memory of the terrible crime of

Tijuco, which had lain forgotten for twenty-three years. The trial

of the young clerk at the mines of the diamond arrayal, his capital

sentence, his escape a few hours before his intended execution--all

were remembered, analyzed, and commented on. An article which had just

appeared in the _O Diario d’o Grand Para,_ the most widely circulated

journal in these parts, after giving a history of the circumstances of

the crime, showed itself decidedly hostile to the prisoner. Why should

these people believe in Joam Dacosta’s innocence, when they were

ignorant of all that his friends knew--of what they alone knew?

And so the people of Manaos became excited. A mob of Indians and negroes

hurried, in their blind folly, to surround the prison and roar forth

tumultuous shouts of death. In this part of the two Americas, where

executions under Lynch law are of frequent occurrence, the mob soon

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.

The magistrate put his fingers into the case and drew out, not without

difficulty, a faded paper, folded with care, and which the water did not

seem to have even touched.

“The document! that is the document!” shouted Fragoso; “that is the very

paper I saw in the hands of Torres!”

Judge Jarriquez unfolded the paper and cast his eyes over it, and then

he turned it over so as to examine it on the back and the front, which

were both covered with writing. “A document it really is!” said he;

“there is no doubt of that. It is indeed a document!”

“Yes,” replied Benito; “and that is the document which proves my

father’s innocence!”

“I do not know that,” replied Judge Jarriquez; “and I am much afraid it

will be very difficult to know it.”

“Why?” exclaimed Benito, who became pale as death.

“Because this document is a cryptogram, and----”

“Well?”

“We have not got the key!”

CHAPTER XII.

THE DOCUMENT

This was a contingency which neither Joam Dacosta nor his people could

have anticipated. In fact, as those who have not forgotten the first

scene in this story are aware, the document was written in a disguised

form in one of the numerous systems used in cryptography.

But in which of them?

To discover this would require all the ingenuity of which the human

brain was capable.

Before dismissing Benito and his companions, Judge Jarriquez had an

exact copy made of the document, and, keeping the original, handed it

over to them after due comparison, so that they could communicate with

the prisoner.

Then, making an appointment for the morrow, they retired, and not

wishing to lose an instant in seeing Joam Dacosta, they hastened on to

the prison, and there, in a short interview, informed him of all that

had passed.

Joam Dacosta took the document and carefully examined it. Shaking

his head, he handed it back to his son. “Perhaps,” he said, “there is

therein written the proof I shall never be able to produce. But if that

proof escapes me, if the whole tenor of my life does not plead for me,

I have nothing more to expect from the justice of men, and my fate is in

the hands of God!”

And all felt it to be so. If the document remained indecipherable, the

position of the convict was a desperate one.

“We shall find it, father!” exclaimed Benito. “There never was

a document of this sort yet which could stand examination. Have

confidence--yes, confidence! Heaven has, so to speak, miraculously

given us the paper which vindicates you, and, after guiding our hands to

recover it, it will not refuse to direct our brains to unravel it.”

Joam Dacosta shook hands with Benito and Manoel, and then the three

young men, much agitated, retired to the jangada, where Yaquita was

awaiting them.

Yaquita was soon informed of what had happened since the evening--the

reappearance of the body of Torres, the discovery of the document, and

the strange form under which the real culprit, the companion of the

adventurer, had thought proper to write his confession--doubtless, so

that it should not compromise him if it fell into strange hands.

Naturally, Lina was informed of this unexpected complication, and of the

discovery made by Fragoso that Torres was an old captain of the woods

belonging to the gang who were employed about the mouths of the Madeira.

“But under what circumstances did you meet him?” asked the young

mulatto.

“It was during one of my runs across the province of Amazones,” replied

Fragoso, “when I was going from village to village, working at my

trade.”

“And the scar?”

“What happened was this: One day I arrived at the mission of Aranas

at the moment that Torres, whom I had never before seen, had picked

a quarrel with one of his comrades--and a bad lot they are!--and this

quarrel ended with a stab from a knife, which entered the arm of the

captain of the woods. There was no doctor there, and so I took charge of

the wound, and that is how I made his acquaintance.”

“What does it matter after all,” replied the young girl, “that we know

what Torres had been? He was not the author of the crime, and it does

not help us in the least.”

“No, it does not,” answered Fragoso; “for we shall end by reading the

document, and then the innocence of Joam Dacosta will be palpable to the

eyes of all.”

This was likewise the hope of Yaquita, of Benito, of Manoel, and of

Minha, and, shut up in the house, they passed long hours in endeavoring

to decipher the writing.

But if it was their hope--and there is no need to insist on that

point--it was none the less that of Judge Jarriquez.

After having drawn up his report at the end of his examination

establishing the identity of Joam Dacosta, the magistrate had sent it

off to headquarters, and therewith he thought he had finished with the

affair so far as he was concerned. It could not well be otherwise.

On the discovery of the document, Jarriquez suddenly found himself face

to face with the study of which he was a master. He, the seeker after

numerical combinations, the solver of amusing problems, the answerer of

charades, rebuses, logogryphs, and such things, was at last in his true

element.

At the thought that the document might perhaps contain the justification

of Joam Dacosta, he felt all the instinct of the analyst aroused. Here,

before his very eyes, was a cryptogram! And so from that moment he

thought of nothing but how to discover its meaning, and it is scarcely

necessary to say that he made up his mind to work at it continuously,

even if he forgot to eat or to drink.

After the departure of the young people, Judge Jarriquez installed

himself in his study. His door, barred against every one, assured him of

several hours of perfect solitude. His spectacles were on his nose,

his snuff-box on the table. He took a good pinch so as to develop the

finesse and sagacity of his mind. He picked up the document and became

absorbed in meditation, which soon became materialized in the shape of a

monologue. The worthy justice was one of those unreserved men who think

more easily aloud than to himself. “Let us proceed with method,” he

said. “No method, no logic; no logic, no success.”

Then, taking the document, he ran through it from beginning to end,

without understanding it in the least.

The document contained a hundred lines, which were divided into half a

dozen paragraphs.

“Hum!” said the judge, after a little reflection; “to try every

paragraph, one after the other, would be to lose precious time, and be

of no use. I had better select one of these paragraphs, and take the one

which is likely to prove the most interesting. Which of them would do

this better than the last, where the recital of the whole affair is

probably summed up? Proper names might put me on the track, among others

that of Joam Dacosta; and if he had anything to do with this document,

his name will evidently not be absent from its concluding paragraph.”

The magistrate’s reasoning was logical, and he was decidedly right in

bringing all his resources to bear in the first place on the gist of the

cryptogram as contained in its last paragraph.

Here is the paragraph, for it is necessary to again bring it before the

eyes of the reader so as to show how an analyst set to work to discover

its meaning.

_“P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h x g k f n d r x u j u

g I o c y t d x v k s b x h h u y p o h d v y r y m h u h p u y d k j o

x p h e t o z l s l e t n p m v f f o v p d p a j x h y y n o j y g g a

y m e q y n f u q l n m v l y f g s u z m q I z t l b q q y u g s q e u

b v n r c r e d g r u z b l r m x y u h q h p z d r r g c r o h e p q x

u f I v v r p l p h o n t h v d d q f h q s n t z h h h n f e p m q k y

u u e x k t o g z g k y u u m f v I j d q d p z j q s y k r p l x h x q

r y m v k l o h h h o t o z v d k s p p s u v j h d.”_

At the outset, Judge Jarrizuez noticed that the lines of the document

were not divided either into words or phrases, and that there was a

complete absence of punctuation. This fact could but render the reading

of the document more difficult.

“Let us see, however,” he said, “if there is not some assemblage of

letters which appears to form a word--I mean a pronounceable word,

whose number of consonants is in proportion to its vowels. And at the

beginning I see the word _phy;_ further on the word _gas_. Halloo!

_ujugi_. Does that mean the African town on the banks of Tanganyika?

What has that got to do with all this? Further on here is the word

_ypo_. Is it Greek, then? Close by here is _rym_ and _puy,_ and _jox,_

and _phetoz,_ and _jyggay,_ and _mv,_ and _qruz_. And before that we

have got _red_ and _let_. That is good! those are two English words.

Then _ohe--syk;_ then _rym_ once more, and then the word _oto.”_

Judge Jarriquez let the paper drop, and thought for a few minutes.

“All the words I see in this thing seem queer!” he said. “In fact, there

is nothing to give a clue to their origin. Some look like Greek, some

like Dutch; some have an English twist, and some look like nothing at

all! To say nothing of these series of consonants which are not wanted

in any human pronunciation. Most assuredly it will not be very easy to

find the key to this cryptogram.”

The magistrate’s fingers commenced to beat a tattoo on his desk--a kind

of reveille to arouse his dormant faculties.

“Let us see,” he said, “how many letters there are in the paragraph.”

He counted them, pen in hand.

“Two hundred and seventy-six!” he said. “Well, now let us try what

proportion these different letters bear to each other.”

This occupied him for some time. The judge took up the document, and,

with his pen in his hand, he noted each letter in alphabetical order.

In a quarter of an hour he had obtained the following table:

_a_ =  3 times

_b_ =  4  --

_c_ =  3  --

_d_ = 16  --

_e_ =  9  --

_f_ = 10  --

_g_ = 13  --

_h_ = 23  --

_i_ =  4  --

_j_ =  8  --

_k_ =  9  --

_l_ =  9  --

_m_ =  9  --

_n_ =  9  --

_o_ = 12  --

_p_ = 16  --

_q_ = 16  --

_r_ = 12  --

_s_ = 10  --

_t_ =  8  --

_u_ = 17  --

_v_ = 13  --

_x_ = 12  --

_y_ = 19  --

_z_ = 12  --

----------------

Total... 276 times.

“Ah, ah!” he exclaimed. “One thing strikes me at once, and that is that

in this paragraph all the letters of the alphabet are not used. That is

very strange. If we take up a book and open it by chance it will be

very seldom that we shall hit upon two hundred and seventy-six letters

without all the signs of the alphabet figuring among them. After all, it

may be chance,” and then he passed to a different train of thought.

“One important point is to see if the vowels and consonants are in their

normal proportion.”

And so he seized his pen, counted up the vowels, and obtained the

following result:

_a_ =  3 times

_e_ =  9  --

_i_ =  4  --

_o_ = 12  --

_u_ = 17  --

_y_ = 19  --

----------------

Total... 64 vowels.

“And thus there are in this paragraph, after we have done our

subtraction, sixty-four vowels and two hundred and twelve consonants.

Good! that is the normal proportion. That is about a fifth, as in the

alphabet, where there are six vowels among twenty-six letters. It is

possible, therefore, that the document is written in the language of our

country, and that only the signification of each letter is changed. If

it has been modified in regular order, and a _b_ is always represented

by an _l,_ and _o_ by a _v,_ a _g_ by a _k,_ an _u_ by an _r,_ etc., I

will give up my judgeship if I do not read it. What can I do better than

follow the method of that great analytical genius, Edgar Allan Poe?”

Judge Jarriquez herein alluded to a story by the great American

romancer, which is a masterpiece. Who has not read the “Gold Bug?” In

this novel a cryptogram, composed of ciphers, letters, algebraic signs,

asterisks, full-stops, and commas, is submitted to a truly mathematical

analysis, and is deciphered under extraordinary conditions, which the

admirers of that strange genius can never forget. On the reading of the

American document depended only a treasure, while on that of this

one depended a man’s life. Its solution was consequently all the more

interesting.

The magistrate, who had often read and re-read his “Gold Bug,” was

perfectly acquainted with the steps in the analysis so minutely

described by Edgar Poe, and he resolved to proceed in the same way on

this occasion. In doing so he was certain, as he had said, that if

the value or signification of each letter remained constant, he would,

sooner or later, arrive at the solution of the document.

“What did Edgar Poe do?” he repeated. “First of all he began by finding

out the sign--here there are only letters, let us say the letter--which

was reproduced the oftenest. I see that that is _h,_ for it is met with

twenty-three times. This enormous proportion shows, to begin with, that

_h_ does not stand for _h,_ but, on the contrary, that it represents the

letter which recurs most frequently in our language, for I suppose

the document is written in Portuguese. In English or French it would

certainly be _e,_ in Italian it would be _i_ or _a,_ in Portuguese it

will be _a_ or _o_. Now let us say that it signifies _a_ or _o.”_

After this was done, the judge found out the letter which recurred most

frequently after _h,_ and so on, and he formed the following table:

_h_ = 23 times

_y_ = 19  --

_u_ = 17  --

_d p q_ = 16  --

_g v_ = 13  --

_o r x z_ = 12  --

_f s_ = 10  --

_e k l m n_ =  9  --

_j t_ =  8  --

_b i_ =  8  --

_a c_ =  8  --

“Now the letter _a_ only occurs thrice!” exclaimed the judge, “and it

ought to occur the oftenest. Ah! that clearly proves that the meaning

had been changed. And now, after _a_ or _o,_ what are the letters which

figure oftenest in our language? Let us see,” and Judge Jarriquez, with

truly remarkable sagacity, which denoted a very observant mind, started

on this new quest. In this he was only imitating the American romancer,

who, great analyst as he was, had, by simple induction, been able to

construct an alphabet corresponding to the signs of the cryptogram and

by means of it to eventually read the pirate’s parchment note with ease.

The magistrate set to work in the same way, and we may affirm that he

was no whit inferior to his illustrious master. Thanks to his previous

work at logogryphs and squares, rectangular arrangements and other

enigmas, which depend only on an arbitrary disposition of the letters,

he was already pretty strong in such mental pastimes. On this

occasion he sought to establish the order in which the letters were

reproduced--vowels first, consonants afterward.

Three hours had elapsed since he began. He had before his eyes an

alphabet which, if his procedure were right, would give him the right

meaning of the letters in the document. He had only to successively

apply the letters of his alphabet to those of his paragraph. But before

making this application some slight emotion seized upon the judge. He

fully experienced the intellectual gratification--much greater than,

perhaps, would be thought--of the man who, after hours of obstinate

endeavor, saw the impatiently sought-for sense of the logogryph coming

into view.

“Now let us try,” he said; “and I shall be very much surprised if I have

not got the solution of the enigma!”

Judge Jarriquez took off his spectacles and wiped the glasses; then he

put them back again and bent over the table. His special alphabet was in

one hand, the cryptogram in the other. He commenced to write under the

first line of the paragraph the true letters, which, according to him,

ought to correspond exactly with each of the cryptographic letters. As

with the first line so did he with the second, and the third, and the

fourth, until he reached the end of the paragraph.

Oddity as he was, he did not stop to see as he wrote if the assemblage

of letters made intelligible words. No; during the first stage his

mind refused all verification of that sort. What he desired was to give

himself the ecstasy of reading it all straight off at once.

And now he had done.

“Let us read!” he exclaimed.

And he read. Good heavens! what cacophony! The lines he had formed with

the letters of his alphabet had no more sense in them that those of

the document! It was another series of letters, and that was all.

They formed no word; they had no value. In short, they were just as

hieroglyphic.

“Confound the thing!” exclaimed Judge Jarriquez.

CHAPTER XIII.

IS IT A MATTER OF FIGURES?

It was seven o’clock in the evening. Judge Jarriquez had all the time

been absorbed in working at the puzzle--and was no further advanced--and

had forgotten the time of repast and the time of repose, when there came

a knock at his study door.

It was time. An hour later, and all the cerebral substance of the vexed

magistrate would certainly have evaporated under the intense heat into

which he had worked his head.

At the order to enter--which was given in an impatient tone--the door

opened and Manoel presented himself.

The young doctor had left his friends on board the jangada at work on

the indecipherable document, and had come to see Judge Jarriquez. He was

anxious to know if he had been fortunate in his researches. He had come

to ask if he had at length discovered the system on which the cryptogram

had been written.

The magistrate was not sorry to see Manoel come in. He was in that state

of excitement that solitude was exasperating to him. He wanted some one

to speak to, some one as anxious to penetrate the mystery as he was.

Manoel was just the man.

“Sir,” said Manoel as he entered, “one question! Have you succeeded

better than we have?”

“Sit down first,” exclaimed Judge Jarriquez, who got up and began to

pace the room. “Sit down. If we are both of us standing, you will walk

one way and I shall walk the other, and the room will be too narrow to

hold us.”

Manoel sat down and repeated his question.

“No! I have not had any success!” replied the magistrate; “I do not

think I am any better off. I have got nothing to tell you; but I have

found out a certainty.”

“What is that, sir?”

“That the document is not based on conventional signs, but on what is

known in cryptology as a cipher, that is to say, on a number.”

“Well, sir,” answered Manoel, “cannot a document of that kind always be

read?”

“Yes,” said Jarriquez, “if a letter is invariably represented by the

same letter; if an _a,_ for example, is always a _p,_ and a _p_ is

always an _x;_ if not, it cannot.”

“And in this document?”

“In this document the value of the letter changes with the arbitrarily

selected cipher which necessitates it. So a _b_ will in one place be

represented by a _k_ will later on become a _z,_ later on an _u_ or an

_n_ or an _f,_ or any other letter.”

“And then?”

“And then, I am sorry to say, the cryptogram is indecipherable.”

“Indecipherable!” exclaimed Manoel. “No, sir; we shall end by finding

the key of the document on which the man’s life depends.”

Manoel had risen, a prey to the excitement he could not control; the

reply he had received was too hopeless, and he refused to accept it for

good.

At a gesture from the judge, however, he sat down again, and in a calmer

voice asked:

“And in the first place, sir, what makes you think that the basis of

this document is a number, or, as you call it, a cipher?”

“Listen to me, young man,” replied the judge, “and you will be forced to

give in to the evidence.”

The magistrate took the document and put it before the eyes of Manoel

and showed him what he had done.

“I began,” he said, “by treating this document in the proper way, that

is to say, logically, leaving nothing to chance. I applied to it an

alphabet based on the proportion the letters bear to one another

which is usual in our language, and I sought to obtain the meaning by

following the precepts of our immortal analyst, Edgar Poe. Well, what

succeeded with him collapsed with me.”

“Collapsed!” exclaimed Manoel.

“Yes, my dear young man, and I at once saw that success sought in that

fashion was impossible. In truth, a stronger man than I might have been

deceived.”

“But I should like to understand,” said Manoel, “and I do not----”

“Take the document,” continued Judge Jarriquez; “first look at the

disposition of the letters, and read it through.”

Manoel obeyed.

“Do you not see that the combination of several of the letters is very

strange?” asked the magistrate.

“I do not see anything,” said Manoel, after having for perhaps the

hundredth time read through the document.

“Well! study the last paragraph! There you understand the sense of the

whole is bound to be summed up. Do you see anything abnormal?”

“Nothing.”

“There is, however, one thing which absolutely proves that the language

is subject to the laws of number.”

“And that is?”

“That is that you see three _h’s_ coming together in two different

places.”

What Jarriquez said was correct, and it was of a nature to attract

attention. The two hundred and fourth, two hundred and fifth, and two

hundred and sixth letters of the paragraph, and the two hundred and

fifty-eight, two hundred and fifty-ninth, and two hundred and sixtieth

letters of the paragraph were consecutive _h’s_. At first this

peculiarity had not struck the magistrate.

“And that proves?” asked Manoel, without divining the deduction that

could be drawn from the combination.

“That simply proves that the basis of the document is a number. It shows

_à priori_ that each letter is modified in virtue of the ciphers of the

number and according to the place which it occupies.”

“And why?”

“Because in no language will you find words with three consecutive

repetitions of the letter _h.”_

Manoel was struck with the argument; he thought about it, and, in short,

had no reply to make.

“And had I made the observation sooner,” continued the magistrate, “I

might have spared myself a good deal of trouble and a headache which

extends from my occiput to my sinciput.”

“But, sir,” asked Manoel, who felt the little hope vanishing on which he

had hitherto rested, “what do you mean by a cipher?”

“Tell me a number.”

“Any number you like.”

“Give me an example and you will understand the explanation better.”

Judge Jarriquez sat down at the table, took up a sheet of paper and a

pencil, and said:

“Now, Mr. Manoel, let us choose a sentence by chance, the first that

comes; for instance:

_Judge Jarriquez has an ingenious mind._

I write this phrase so as to space the letters different and I get:

_Judgejarriquezhasaningeniousmind._

“That done,” said the magistrate, to whom the phrase seemed to contain

a proposition beyond dispute, looking Manoel straight in the face,

“suppose I take a number by chance, so as to give a cryptographic form

to this natural succession of words; suppose now this word is composed

of three ciphers, and let these ciphers be 2, 3, and 4. Now on the line

below I put the number 234, and repeat it as many times as are necessary

to get to the end of the phrase, and so that every cipher comes

underneath a letter. This is what we get:

_J u d g e j a r r I q u e z h a s a n I n g e n I o u s m I n d_ 2 3 4

2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 2 3 4 And now,

Mr. Manoel, replacing each letter by the letter in advance of it in

alphabetical order according to the value of the cipher, we get:

_j_ plus 2 equal _l_

_u_ plus 3 equal _x_

_d_ plus 4 equal _h_

_g_ plus 2 equal _i_

_e_ plus 3 equal _h_

_j_ plus 4 equal _n_

_a_ plus 2 equal _c_

_r_ plus 3 equal _u_

_r_ plus 4 equal _v_

_i_ plus 2 equal _k_

_q_ plus 3 equal _t_

_u_ plus 4 equal _y_

_e_ plus 2 equal _g_

_a_ plus 3 equal _c_

_h_ plus 4 equal _t_

_a_ plus 2 equal _c_

_s_ plus 3 equal _v_

_a_ plus 4 equal _e_

_n_ plus 2 equal _p_

_i_ plus 3 equal _l_

_n_ plus 4 equal _r_

_g_ plus 2 equal _i_

_e_ plus 3 equal _h_

_n_ plus 4 equal _r_

_i_ plus 2 equal _k_

_o_ plus 3 equal _r_

_u_ plus 4 equal _y_

_s_ plus 2 equal _u_

and so on.

“If, on account of the value of the ciphers which compose the number

I come to the end of the alphabet without having enough complementary

letters to deduct, I begin again at the beginning. That is what happens

at the end of my name when the _z_ is replaced by the 3. As after _z_

the alphabet has no more letters, I commence to count from _a,_ and

so get the _c_. That done, when I get to the end of this cryptographic

system, made up of the 234--which was arbitrarily selected, do not

forget!--the phrase which you recognize above is replaced by

_lxhihncuvktygclveplrihrkryupmpg._

“And now, young man, just look at it, and do you not think it is very

much like what is in the document? Well, what is the consequence? Why,

that the signification of the letters depends on a cipher which chance

puts beneath them, and the cryptographic letter which answers to a

true one is not always the same. So in this phrase the first _j_ is

represented by an _l,_ the second by an _n;_ the first _e_ by an _h,_

the second b a _g,_ the third by an _h;_ the first _d_ is represented by

an _h,_ the last by a _g;_ the first _u_ by an _x,_ the last by a _y;_

the first and second _a’s_ by a _c,_ the last by an _e;_ and in my own

name one _r_ is represented by a _u,_ the other by a _v._ and so on. Now

do you see that if you do not know the cipher 234 you will never be able

to read the lines, and consequently if we do not know the number of the

document it remains undecipherable.”

On hearing the magistrate reason with such careful logic, Manoel was at

first overwhelmed, but, raising his head, he exclaimed:

“No, sir, I will not renounce the hope of finding the number!”

“We might have done so,” answered Judge Jarriquez, “if the lines of the

document had been divided into words.”

“And why?”

“For this reason, young man. I think we can assume that in the last

paragraph all that is written in these earlier paragraphs is summed up.

Now I am convinced that in it will be found the name of Joam Dacosta.

Well, if the lines had been divided into words, in trying the words one

after the other--I mean the words composed of seven letters, as the name

of Dacosta is--it would not have been impossible to evolve the number

which is the key of the document.”

“Will you explain to me how you ought to proceed to do that, sir?” asked

Manoel, who probably caught a glimpse of one more hope.

“Nothing can be more simple,” answered the judge. “Let us take, for

example, one of the words in the sentence we have just written--my

name, if you like. It is represented in the cryptogram by this queer

succession of letters, _ncuvktygc_. Well, arranging these letters in a

column, one under the other, and then placing against them the letters

of my name and deducting one from the other the numbers of their places

in alphabetical order, I see the following result:

Between _n_ and _j_ we have 4 letters

--    _c_ -- _a_    --    2    --

--    _u_ -- _r_    --    3    --

--    _v_ -- _r_    --    4    --

--    _k_ -- _i_    --    2    --

--    _t_ -- _q_    --    3    --

--    _y_ -- _u_    --    4    --

--    _g_ -- _e_    --    2    --

--    _c_ -- _z_    --    3    --

“Now what is the column of ciphers made up of that we have got by this

simple operation? Look here! 423 423 423, that is to say, of repetitions

of the numbers 423, or 234, or 342.”

“Yes, that is it!” answered Manoel.

“You understand, then, by this means, that in calculating the true

letter from the false, instead of the false from the true, I have been

able to discover the number with ease; and the number I was in search of

is really the 234 which I took as the key of my cryptogram.”

“Well, sir!” exclaimed Manoel, “if that is so, the name of Dacosta is in

the last paragraph; and taking successively each letter of those lines

for the first of the seven letters which compose his name, we ought to

get----”

“That would be impossible,” interrupted the judge, “except on one

condition.”

“What is that?”

“That the first cipher of the number should happen to be the first

letter of the word Dacosta, and I think you will agree with me that that

is not probable.”

“Quite so!” sighed Manoel, who, with this improbability, saw the last

chance vanish.

“And so we must trust to chance alone,” continued Jarriquez, who shook

his head, “and chance does not often do much in things of this sort.”

“But still,” said Manoel, “chance might give us this number.”

“This number,” exclaimed the magistrate--“this number? But how many

ciphers is it composed of? Of two, or three, or four, or nine, or ten?

Is it made of different ciphers only or of ciphers in different order

many times repeated? Do you not know, young man, that with the ordinary

ten ciphers, using all at a time, but without any repetition, you

can make three million two hundred and sixty-eight thousand and eight

hundred different numbers, and that if you use the same cipher more than

once in the number, these millions of combinations will be enormously

increased! And do you not know that if we employ every one of the five

hundred and twenty-five thousand and six hundred minutes of which the

year is composed to try at each of these numbers, it would take you six

years, and that you would want three centuries if each operation took

you an hour? No! 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?”

“Who told me so?” repeated Manoel, and his face was hidden in his hands.

In fact, nothing could prove for certain that the document had anything

to do with the affair in the diamond province. There was, in fact,

nothing to show that it was not utterly devoid of meaning, and that it

had been imagined by Torres himself, who was as capable of selling a

false thing as a true one!

“It does not matter, Manoel,” continued the judge, rising; “it does not

matter! Whatever it may be to which the document refers, I have not

yet given up discovering the cipher. After all, it is worth more than a

logogryph or a rebus!”

At these words Manoel rose, shook hands with the magistrate, and

returned to the jangada, feeling more hopeless when he went back than

when he set out.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHANCE!