Jules Verne (35 page)

Between her husband, with whom she passed all the time that was allowed
her, and her son, a prey to despair which made her tremble for his
reason, the brave Yaquita lost none of her moral energy. In her they
found the valiant daughter of Magalhaës, the worthy wife of the fazender
of Iquitos.

The attitude of Joam Dacosta was well adapted to sustain her in this
ordeal. That gallant man, that rigid Puritan, that austere worker, whose
whole life had been a battle, had not yet shown a moment of weakness.

The most terrible blow which had struck him without prostrating him had
been the death of Judge Ribeiro, in whose mind his innocence did not
admit of a doubt. Was it not with the help of his old defender that he
had hoped to strive for his rehabilitation? The intervention of Torres
he had regarded throughout as being quite secondary for him. And of this
document he had no knowledge when he left Iquitos to hand himself over
to the justice of his country. He only took with him moral proofs. When
a material proof was unexpectedly produced in the course of the affair,
before or after his arrest, he was certainly not the man to despise it.
But if, on account of regrettable circumstances, the proof disappeared,
he would find himself once more in the same position as when he passed
the Brazilian frontier—the position of a man who came to say, "Here is
my past life; here is my present; here is an entirely honest existence
of work and devotion which I bring you. You passed on me at first an
erroneous judgment. After twenty-three years of exile I have come to
give myself up! Here I am; judge me again!"

The death of Torres, the impossibility of reading the document found on
him, had thus not produced on Joam Dacosta the impression which it had
on his children, his friends, his household, and all who were interested
in him.

"I have faith in my innocence," he repeated to Yaquita, "as I have
faith in God. If my life is still useful to my people, and a miracle is
necessary to save me, that miracle will be performed; if not, I shall
die! God alone is my judge!"

The excitement increased in Manaos as the time ran on; the affair was
discussed with unexampled acerbity. In the midst of this enthralment of
public opinion, which evoked so much of the mysterious, the document was
the principal object of conversation.

At the end of this fourth day not a single person doubted but that it
contained the vindication of the doomed man. Every one had been given
an opportunity of deciphering its incomprehensible contents, for the
"Diario d'o Grand Para" had reproduced it in facsimile. Autograph copies
were spread about in great numbers at the suggestion of Manoel, who
neglect nothing that might lead to the penetration of the mystery—not
even chance, that "nickname of Providence," as some one has called it.

In addition, a reward of one hundred contos (or three hundred thousand
francs) was promised to any one who could discover the cipher so
fruitlessly sought after—and read the document. This was quite a
fortune, and so people of all classes forgot to eat, drink, or sleep to
attack this unintelligible cryptogram.

Up to the present, however, all had been useless, and probably the most
ingenious analysts in the world would have spent their time in vain. It
had been advertised that any solution should be sent, without delay, to
Judge Jarriquez, to his house in God-the-Son Street; but the evening
of the 29th of August came and none had arrived, nor was any likely to
arrive.

Of all those who took up the study of the puzzle, Judge Jarriquez was
one of the most to be pitied. By a natural association of ideas, he also
joined in the general opinion that the document referred to the affair
at Tijuco, and that it had been written by the hand of the guilty man,
and exonerated Joam Dacosta. And so he put even more ardor into his
search for the key. It was not only the art for art's sake which guided
him, it was a sentiment of justice, of pity toward a man suffering under
an unjust condemnation. If it is the fact that a certain quantity of
phosphorus is expended in the work of the brain, it would be difficult
to say how many milligrammes the judge had parted with to excite
the network of his "sensorium," and after all, to find out nothing,
absolutely nothing.

But Jarriquez had no idea of abandoning the inquiry. If he could only
now trust to chance, he would work on for that chance. He tried to evoke
it by all means possible and impossible. He had given himself over to
fury and anger, and, what was worse, to impotent anger!

During the latter part of this day he had been trying different
numbers—numbers selected arbitrarily—and how many of them can scarcely
be imagined. Had he had the time, he would not have shrunk from plunging
into the millions of combinations of which the ten symbols of numeration
are capable. He would have given his whole life to it at the risk of
going mad before the year was out. Mad! was he not that already? He had
had the idea that the document might be read through the paper, and so
he turned it round and exposed it to the light, and tried it in that
way.

Nothing! The numbers already thought of, and which he tried in this new
way, gave no result. Perhaps the document read backward, and the last
letter was really the first, for the author would have done this had he
wished to make the reading more difficult.

Nothing! The new combination only furnished a series of letters just as
enigmatic.

At eight o'clock in the evening Jarriquez, with his face in his hands,
knocked up, worn out mentally and physically, had neither strength to
move, to speak, to think, or to associate one idea with another.

Suddenly a noise was heard outside. Almost immediately, notwithstanding
his formal orders, the door of his study was thrown open. Benito and
Manoel were before him, Benito looking dreadfully pale, and Manoel
supporting him, for the unfortunate young man had hardly strength to
support himself.

The magistrate quickly arose.

"What is it, gentlemen? What do you want?" he asked.

"The cipher! the cipher!" exclaimed Benito, mad with grief—"the cipher
of the document."

"Do you know it, then?" shouted the judge.

"No, sir," said Manoel. "But you?"

"Nothing! nothing!"

"Nothing?" gasped Benito, and in a paroxysm of despair he took a knife
from his belt and would have plunged it into his breast had not the
judge and Manoel jumped forward and managed to disarm him.

"Benito," said Jarriquez, in a voice which he tried to keep calm, "if
you father cannot escape the expiation of a crime which is not his, you
could do something better than kill yourself."

"What?" said Benito.

"Try and save his life!"

"How?"

"That is for you to discover," answered the magistrate, "and not for me
to say."

ON THE FOLLOWING day, the 30th of August, Benito and Manoel talked
matters over together. They had understood the thought to which the
judge had not dared to give utterance in their presence, and were
engaged in devising some means by which the condemned man could escape
the penalty of the law.

Nothing else was left for them to do. It was only too certain that for
the authorities at Rio Janeiro the undeciphered document would have no
value whatever, that it would be a dead letter, that the first verdict
which declared Joam Dacosta the perpetrator of the crime at Tijuco
would not be set aside, and that, as in such cases no commutation of the
sentence was possible, the order for his execution would inevitably be
received.

Once more, then, Joam Dacosta would have to escape by flight from an
unjust imprisonment.

It was at the outset agreed between the two young men that the secret
should be carefully kept, and that neither Yaquita nor Minha should be
informed of preparations, which would probably only give rise to
hopes destined never to be realized. Who could tell if, owing to
some unforeseen circumstance, the attempt at escape would not prove a
miserable failure?

The presence of Fragoso on such an occasion would have been most
valuable. Discreet and devoted, his services would have been most
welcome to the two young fellows; but Fragoso had not reappeared. Lina,
when asked, could only say that she knew not what had become of him, nor
why he had left the raft without telling her anything about it.

And assuredly, had Fragoso foreseen that things would have turned out
as they were doing, he would never have left the Dacosta family on an
expedition which appeared to promise no serious result. Far better
for him to have assisted in the escape of the doomed man than to have
hurried off in search of the former comrades of Torres!

But Fragoso was away, and his assistance had to be dispensed with.

At daybreak Benito and Manoel left the raft and proceeded to Manaos.
They soon reached the town, and passed through its narrow streets, which
at that early hour were quite deserted. In a few minutes they arrived in
front of the prison. The waste ground, amid which the old convent which
served for a house of detention was built, was traversed by them in all
directions, for they had come to study it with the utmost care.

Fifty-five feet from the ground, in an angle of the building, they
recognized the window of the cell in which Joam Dacosta was confined.
The window was secured with iron bars in a miserable state of repair,
which it would be easy to tear down or cut through if they could only
get near enough. The badly jointed stones in the wall, which were
crumbled away every here and there, offered many a ledge for the feet to
rest on, if only a rope could be fixed to climb up by. One of the bars
had slipped out of its socket, and formed a hook over which it might
be possible to throw a rope. That done, one or two of the bars could be
removed, so as to permit a man to get through. Benito and Manoel would
then have to make their way into the prisoner's room, and without much
difficulty the escape could be managed by means of the rope fastened to
the projecting iron. During the night, if the sky were very cloudy, none
of these operations would be noticed before the day dawned. Joam Dacosta
could get safely away.

Manoel and Benito spent an hour about the spot, taking care not to
attract attention, but examining the locality with great exactness,
particularly as regarded the position of the window, the arrangement of
the iron bars, and the place from which it would be best to throw the
line.

"That is agreed," said Manoel at length. "And now, ought Joam Dacosta to
be told about this?"

"No, Manoel. Neither to him, any more than to my mother, ought we
to impart the secret of an attempt in which there is such a risk of
failure."

"We shall succeed, Benito!" continued Manoel. "However, we must prepare
for everything; and in case the chief of the prison should discover us
at the moment of escape—"

"We shall have money enough to purchase his silence," answered Benito.

"Good!" replied Manoel. "But once your father is out of prison he
cannot remain hidden in the town or on the jangada. Where is he to find
refuge?"

This was the second question to solve: and a very difficult one it was.

A hundred paces away from the prison, however, the waste land was
crossed by one of those canals which flow through the town into the Rio
Negro. This canal afforded an easy way of gaining the river if a pirogue
were in waiting for the fugitive. From the foot of the wall to the canal
side was hardly a hundred yards.

Benito and Manoel decided that about eight o'clock in the evening one
of the pirogues, with two strong rowers, under the command of the pilot
Araujo, should start from the jangada. They could ascend the Rio
Negro, enter the canal, and, crossing the waste land, remain concealed
throughout the night under the tall vegetation on the banks.

But once on board, where was Joam Dacosta to seek refuge? To return to
Iquitos was to follow a road full of difficulties and peril, and a long
one in any case, should the fugitive either travel across the country or
by the river. Neither by horse not pirogue could he be got out of danger
quickly enough, and the fazenda was no longer a safe retreat. He would
not return to it as the fazender, Joam Garral, but as the convict, Joam
Dacosta, continually in fear of his extradition. He could never dream of
resuming his former life.

To get away by the Rio Negro into the north of the province, or even
beyond the Brazilian territory, would require more time than he could
spare, and his first care must be to escape from immediate pursuit.

To start again down the Amazon? But stations, village, and towns
abounded on both sides of the river. The description of the fugitive
would be sent to all the police, and he would run the risk of being
arrested long before he reached the Atlantic. And supposing he reached
the coast, where and how was he to hide and wait for a passage to put
the sea between himself and his pursuers?

On consideration of these various plans, Benito and Manoel agreed that
neither of them was practicable. One, however, did offer some chance of
safety, and that was to embark in the pirogue, follow the canal into the
Rio Negro, descend this tributary under the guidance of the pilot, reach
the confluence of the rivers, and run down the Amazon along its
right bank for some sixty miles during the nights, resting during the
daylight, and so gaining the
embouchure
of the Madeira.

This tributary, which, fed by a hundred affluents, descends from the
watershed of the Cordilleras, is a regular waterway opening into the
very heart of Bolivia. A pirogue could pass up it and leave no trace of
its passage, and a refuge could be found in some town or village beyond
the Brazilian frontier. There Joam Dacosta would be comparatively
safe, and there for several months he could wait for an opportunity of
reaching the Pacific coast and taking passage in some vessel leaving one
of its ports; and if the ship were bound for one of the States of North
America he would be free. Once there, he could sell the fazenda, leave
his country forever, and seek beyond the sea, in the Old World, a final
retreat in which to end an existence so cruelly and unjustly disturbed.
Anywhere he might go, his family—not excepting Manoel, who was bound
to him by so many ties—would assuredly follow without the slightest
hesitation.