Jules Verne

"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."

THE MAN who held in his hand the document of which this strange
assemblage of letters formed the concluding paragraph remained for some
moments lost in thought.

It contained about a hundred of these lines, with the letters at even
distances, and undivided into words. It seemed to have been written many
years before, and time had already laid his tawny finger on the sheet of
good stout paper which was covered with the hieroglyphics.

On what principle had these letters been arranged? He who held the paper
was alone able to tell. With such cipher language it is as with the
locks of some of our iron safes—in either case the protection is the
same. The combinations which they lead to can be counted by millions,
and no calculator's life would suffice to express them. Some particular
"word" has to be known before the lock of the safe will act, and some
"cipher" is necessary before that cryptogram can be read.

He who had just reperused the document was but a simple "captain of the
woods." Under the name of
"Capitaes do Mato"
are known in Brazil those
individuals who are engaged in the recapture of fugitive slaves. The
institution dates from 1722. At that period anti-slavery ideas had
entered the minds of a few philanthropists, and more than a century had
to elapse before the mass of the people grasped and applied them. That
freedom was a right, that the very first of the natural rights of
man was to be free and to belong only to himself, would seem to be
self-evident, and yet thousands of years had to pass before the glorious
thought was generally accepted, and the nations of the earth had the
courage to proclaim it.

In 1852, the year in which our story opens, there were still slaves in
Brazil, and as a natural consequence, captains of the woods to pursue
them. For certain reasons of political economy the hour of general
emancipation had been delayed, but the black had at this date the right
to ransom himself, the children which were born to him were born free.
The day was not far distant when the magnificent country, into which
could be put three-quarters of the continent of Europe, would no longer
count a single slave among its ten millions of inhabitants.

The occupation of the captains of the woods was doomed, and at the
period we speak of the advantages obtainable from the capture of
fugitives were rapidly diminishing. While, however, the calling
continued sufficiently profitable, the captains of the woods formed
a peculiar class of adventurers, principally composed of freedmen and
deserters—of not very enviable reputation. The slave hunters in fact
belonged to the dregs of society, and we shall not be far wrong in
assuming that the man with the cryptogram was a fitting comrade for his
fellow
"capitaes do mato."
Torres—for that was his name—unlike the
majority of his companions, was neither half-breed, Indian, nor negro.
He was a white of Brazilian origin, and had received a better education
than befitted his present condition. One of those unclassed men who are
found so frequently in the distant countries of the New World, at a
time when the Brazilian law still excluded mulattoes and others of mixed
blood from certain employments, it was evident that if such exclusion
had affected him, it had done so on account of his worthless character,
and not because of his birth.

Torres at the present moment was not, however, in Brazil. He had just
passed the frontier, and was wandering in the forests of Peru, from
which issue the waters of the Upper Amazon.

He was a man of about thirty years of age, on whom the fatigues of a
precarious existence seemed, thanks to an exceptional temperament and
an iron constitution, to have had no effect. Of middle height, broad
shoulders, regular features, and decided gait, his face was tanned with
the scorching air of the tropics. He had a thick black beard, and eyes
lost under contracting eyebrows, giving that swift but hard glance
so characteristic of insolent natures. Clothed as backwoodsmen are
generally clothed, not over elaborately, his garments bore witness to
long and roughish wear. On his head, stuck jauntily on one side, was
a leather hat with a large brim. Trousers he had of coarse wool, which
were tucked into the tops of the thick, heavy boots which formed the
most substantial part of his attire, and over all, and hiding all, was a
faded yellowish poncho.

But if Torres was a captain of the woods it was evident that he was not
now employed in that capacity, his means of attack and defense being
obviously insufficient for any one engaged in the pursuit of the blacks.
No firearms—neither gun nor revolver. In his belt only one of those
weapons, more sword than hunting-knife, called a
"manchetta,"
and
in addition he had an
"enchada,"
which is a sort of hoe, specially
employed in the pursuit of the tatous and agoutis which abound in the
forests of the Upper Amazon, where there is generally little to fear
from wild beasts.

On the 4th of May, 1852, it happened, then, that our adventurer was
deeply absorbed in the reading of the document on which his eyes
were fixed, and, accustomed as he was to live in the forests of South
America, he was perfectly indifferent to their splendors. Nothing could
distract his attention; neither the constant cry of the howling monkeys,
which St. Hillaire has graphically compared to the ax of the woodman as
he strikes the branches of the trees, nor the sharp jingle of the rings
of the rattlesnake (not an aggressive reptile, it is true, but one of
the most venomous); neither the bawling voice of the horned toad, the
most hideous of its kind, nor even the solemn and sonorous croak of
the bellowing frog, which, though it cannot equal the bull in size, can
surpass him in noise.

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. He read, he verified
the sense of those lines, unintelligible to all but him, and then he
smiled—and a most unpleasant smile it was.

Then he murmured some phrases in an undertone which none in the solitude
of the Peruvian forests could hear, and which no one, had he been
anywhere else, would have heard.

"Yes," said he, at length, "here are a hundred lines very neatly
written, which, for some one that I know, have an importance that is
undoubted. That somebody is rich. It is a question of life or death
for him, and looked at in every way it will cost him something." And,
scrutinizing the paper with greedy eyes, "At a conto
[1]
only for each
word of this last sentence it will amount to a considerable sum, and it
is this sentence which fixes the price. It sums up the entire document.
It gives their true names to true personages; but before trying to
understand it I ought to begin by counting the number of words it
contains, and even when this is done its true meaning may be missed."

In saying this Torres began to count mentally.

"There are fifty-eight words, and that makes fifty-eight contos. With
nothing but that one could live in Brazil, in America, wherever one
wished, and even live without doing anything! And what would it be,
then, if all the words of this document were paid for at the same price?
It would be necessary to count by hundreds of contos. Ah! there is quite
a fortune here for me to realize if I am not the greatest of duffers!"

It seemed as though the hands of Torres felt the enormous sum, and
were already closing over the rolls of gold. Suddenly his thoughts took
another turn.

"At length," he cried, "I see land; and I do not regret the voyage which
has led me from the coast of the Atlantic to the Upper Amazon. But this
man may quit America and go beyond the seas, and then how can I touch
him? But no! he is there, and if I climb to the top of this tree I can
see the roof under which he lives with his family!" Then seizing the
paper and shaking it with terrible meaning: "Before to-morrow I will be
in his presence; before to-morrow he will know that his honor and his
life are contained in these lines. And when he wishes to see the cipher
which permits him to read them, he—well, he will pay for it. He will
pay, if I wish it, with all his fortune, as he ought to pay with all his
blood! Ah! My worthy comrade, who gave me this cipher, who told me where
I could find his old colleague, and the name under which he has been
hiding himself for so many years, hardly suspects that he has made my
fortune!"