Jules Verne (9 page)

"No, Lina is right!" said Benito.

"No, Lina is wrong!" Manoel would naturally return.

Hence highly serious, long-continued discussions, in which no one would
give in.

Then the black on one side and Benito on the other would rush at the
trees and clamber up to the branches encircled by the cipo so as to
arrive at the true direction.

Now nothing was assuredly less easy in that jumble of knots, among which
twisted the liana in the middle of bromelias,
"karatas,"
armed with
their sharp prickles, orchids with rosy flowers and violet lips the size
of gloves, and oncidiums more tangled than a skein of worsted between a
kitten's paws.

And then when the liana ran down again to the ground the difficulty
of picking it out under the mass of lycopods, large-leaved heliconias,
rosy-tasseled calliandras, rhipsalas encircling it like the thread on
an electric reel, between the knots of the large white ipomas, under
the fleshy stems of the vanilla, and in the midst of the shoots and
branchlets of the grenadilla and the vine.

And when the cipo was found again what shouts of joy, and how they
resumed the walk for an instant interrupted!

For an hour the young people had already been advancing, and nothing had
happened to warn them that they were approaching the end.

They shook the liana with vigor, but it would not give, and the birds
flew away in hundreds, and the monkeys fled from tree to tree, so as to
point out the way.

If a thicket barred the road the felling-sword cut a deep gap, and the
group passed in. If it was a high rock, carpeted with verdure, over
which the liana twisted like a serpent, they climbed it and passed on.

A large break now appeared. There, in the more open air, which is as
necessary to it as the light of the sun, the tree of the tropics,
par
excellence,
which, according to Humboldt, "accompanies man in the
infancy of his civilization," the great provider of the inhabitant of
the torrid zones, a banana-tree, was standing alone. The long festoon
of the liana curled round its higher branches, moving away to the other
side of the clearing, and disappeared again into the forest.

"Shall we stop soon?" asked Manoel.

"No; a thousand times no!" cried Benito, "not without having reached the
end of it!"

"Perhaps," observed Minha, "it will soon be time to think of returning."

"Oh, dearest mistress, let us go on again!" replied Lina.

"On forever!" added Benito.

And they plunged more deeply into the forest, which, becoming clearer,
allowed them to advance more easily.

Besides, the cipo bore away to the north, and toward the river. It
became less inconvenient to follow, seeing that they approached the
right bank, and it would be easy to get back afterward.

A quarter of an hour later they all stopped at the foot of a ravine in
front of a small tributary of the Amazon. But a bridge of lianas, made
of
"bejucos,"
twined together by their interlacing branches, crossed
the stream. The cipo, dividing into two strings, served for a handrail,
and passed from one bank to the other.

Benito, all the time in front, had already stepped on the swinging floor
of this vegetable bridge.

Manoel wished to keep his sister back.

"Stay—stay, Minha!" he said, "Benito may go further if he likes, but
let us remain here."

"No! Come on, come on, dear mistress!" said Lina. "Don't be afraid, the
liana is getting thinner; we shall get the better of it, and find out
its end!"

And, without hesitation, the young mulatto boldly ventured toward
Benito.

"What children they are!" replied Minha. "Come along, Manoel, we must
follow."

And they all cleared the bridge, which swayed above the ravine like a
swing, and plunged again beneath the mighty trees.

But they had not proceeded for ten minutes along the interminable cipo,
in the direction of the river, when they stopped, and this time not
without cause.

"Have we got to the end of the liana?" asked Minha.

"No," replied Benito; "but we had better advance with care. Look!" and
Benito pointed to the cipo which, lost in the branches of a high ficus,
was agitated by violent shakings.

"What causes that?" asked Manoel.

"Perhaps some animal that we had better approach with a little
circumspection!"

And Benito, cocking his gun, motioned them to let him go on a bit, and
stepped about ten paces to the front.

Manoel, the two girls, and the black remained motionless where they
were.

Suddenly Benito raised a shout, and they saw him rush toward a tree;
they all ran as well.

Sight the most unforeseen, and little adapted to gratify the eyes!

A man, hanging by the neck, struggled at the end of the liana, which,
supple as a cord, had formed into a slipknot, and the shakings came from
the jerks into which he still agitated it in the last convulsions of his
agony!

Benito threw himself on the unfortunate fellow, and with a cut of his
hunting-knife severed the cipo.

The man slipped on to the ground. Manoel leaned over him, to try and
recall him to life, if it was not too late.

"Poor man!" murmured Minha.

"Mr. Manoel! Mr. Manoel!" cried Lina. "He breathes again! His heart
beats; you must save him."

"True," said Manoel, "but I think it was about time that we came up."

He was about thirty years old, a white, clothed badly enough, much
emaciated, and he seemed to have suffered a good deal.

At his feet were an empty flask, thrown on the ground, and a cup and
ball in palm wood, of which the ball, made of the head of a tortoise,
was tied on with a fiber.

"To hang himself! to hang himself!" repeated Lina, "and young still!
What could have driven him to do such a thing?"

But the attempts of Manoel had not been long in bringing the luckless
wight to life again, and he opened his eyes and gave an "ahem!" so
vigorous and unexpected that Lina, frightened, replied to his cry with
another.

"Who are you, my friend?" Benito asked him.

"An ex-hanger-on, as far as I see."

"But your name?"

"Wait a minute and I will recall myself," said he, passing his hand over
his forehead. "I am known as Fragoso, at your service; and I am
still able to curl and cut your hair, to shave you, and to make you
comfortable according to all the rules of my art. I am a barber, so to
speak more truly, the most desperate of Figaros."

"And what made you think of—"

"What would you have, my gallant sir?" replied Fragoso, with a smile;
"a moment of despair, which I would have duly regretted had the regrets
been in another world! But eight hundred leagues of country to traverse,
and not a coin in my pouch, was not very comforting! I had lost courage
obviously."

To conclude, Fragoso had a good and pleasing figure, and as he recovered
it was evident that he was of a lively disposition. He was one of those
wandering barbers who travel on the banks of the Upper Amazon, going
from village to village, and putting the resources of their art at the
service of negroes, negresses, Indians and Indian women, who appreciate
them very much.

But poor Fragoso, abandoned and miserable, having eaten nothing for
forty hours, astray in the forest, had for an instant lost his head, and
we know the rest.

"My friend," said Benito to him, "you will go back with us to the
fazenda of Iquitos?"

"With pleasure," replied Fragoso; "you cut me down and I belong to you.
I must somehow be dependent."

"Well, dear mistress, don't you think we did well to continue our walk?"
asked Lina.

"That I do," returned the girl.

"Never mind," said Benito; "I never thought that we should finish by
finding a man at the end of the cipo."

"And, above all, a barber in difficulties, and on the road to hang
himself!" replied Fragoso.

The poor fellow, who was now wide awake, was told about what had passed.
He warmly thanked Lina for the good idea she had had of following the
liana, and they all started on the road to the fazenda, where Fragoso
was received in a way that gave him neither wish nor want to try his
wretched task again.

THE HALF-MILE square of forest was cleared. With the carpenters remained
the task of arranging in the form of a raft the many venerable trees
which were lying on the strand.

And an easy task it was. Under the direction of Joam Garral the Indians
displayed their incomparable ingenuity. In everything connected with
house-building or ship-building these natives are, it must be admitted,
astonishing workmen. They have only an ax and a saw, and they work on
woods so hard that the edge of their tools gets absolutely jagged; yet
they square up trunks, shape beams out of enormous stems, and get out of
them joists and planking without the aid of any machinery whatever, and,
endowed with prodigious natural ability, do all these things easily with
their skilled and patient hands.

The trees had not been launched into the Amazon to begin with; Joam
Garral was accustomed to proceed in a different way. The whole mass of
trunks was symmetrically arranged on a flat part of the bank, which
he had already leveled up at the junction of the Nanay with the great
river.

There it was that the jangada was to be built; thence it was that
the Amazon was to float it when the time came for it to start for its
destination.

And here an explanatory note is necessary in regard to the geography
of this immense body of water, and more especially as relating to
a singular phenomenon which the riverside inhabitants describe from
personal observation.

The two rivers which are, perhaps, more extensive than the great artery
of Brazil, the Nile and the Missouri-Mississippi, flow one from south
to north across the African continent, the other from north to south
through North America. They cross districts of many different latitudes,
and consequently of many different climates.

The Amazon, on the contrary, is entirely comprised—at least it is from
the point where it turns to the east, on the frontiers of Ecuador and
Peru—between the second and fourth parallels of south latitude. Hence
this immense river system is under the same climatic conditions during
the whole of its course.

In these parts there are two distinct seasons during which rain falls.
In the north of Brazil the rainy season is in September; in the south
it occurs in March. Consequently the right-hand tributaries and the
left-hand tributaries bring down their floods at half-yearly intervals,
and hence the level of the Amazon, after reaching its maximum in June,
gradually falls until October.

This Joam Garral knew by experience, and he intended to profit by the
phenomenon to launch the jangada, after having built it in comfort
on the river bank. In fact, between the mean and the higher level the
height of the Amazon could vary as much as forty feet, and between the
mean and the lower level as much as thirty feet. A difference of seventy
feet like this gave the fazender all he required.

The building was commenced without delay. Along the huge bank the trunks
were got into place according to their sizes and floating power, which
of course had to be taken into account, as among these thick and heavy
woods there were many whose specific gravity was but little below that
of water.

The first layer was entirely composed of trunks laid side by side.
A little interval had to be left between them, and they were bound
together by transverse beams, which assured the solidity of the whole.
"Piaçaba"
ropes strapped them together as firmly as any chain cables
could have done. This material, which consists of the ramicles of a
certain palm-tree growing very abundantly on the river banks, is in
universal use in the district. Piaçaba floats, resists immersion, and
is cheaply made—very good reasons for causing it to be valuable, and
making it even an article of commerce with the Old World.

Above this double row of trunks and beams were disposed the joists and
planks which formed the floor of the jangada, and rose about thirty
inches above the load water-line. The bulk was enormous, as we must
confess when it is considered that the raft measured a thousand feet
long and sixty broad, and thus had a superificies of sixty thousand
square feet. They were, in fact, about to commit a whole forest to the
Amazon.

The work of building was conducted under the immediate direction of Joam
Garral. But when that part was finished the question of arrangement was
submitted to the discussion of all, including even the gallant Fragoso.

Just a word as to what he was doing in his new situation at the fazenda.

The barber had never been so happy as since the day when he had been
received by the hospitable family. Joam Garral had offered to take him
to Para, on the road to which he was when the liana, according to his
account, had seized him by the neck and brought him up with a round
turn. Fragoso had accepted the offer, thanked him from the bottom of his
heart, and ever since had sought to make himself useful in a thousand
ways. He was a very intelligent fellow—what one might call a "double
right-hander"—that is to say, he could do everything, and could do
everything well. As merry as Lina, always singing, and always ready with
some good-natured joke, he was not long in being liked by all.

But it was with the young mulatto that he claimed to have contracted the
heaviest obligation.

"A famous idea that of yours, Miss Lina," he was constantly saying, "to
play at 'following the liana!' It is a capital game even if you do not
always find a poor chap of a barber at the end!"

"Quite a chance, Mr. Fragoso," would laughingly reply Lina; "I assure
you, you owe me nothing!"

"What! nothing! I owe you my life, and I want it prolonged for a hundred
years, and that my recollection of the fact may endure even longer! You
see, it is not my trade to be hanged! If I tried my hand at it, it was
through necessity. But, on consideration, I would rather die of hunger,
and before quite going off I should try a little pasturage with the
brutes! As for this liana, it is a lien between us, and so you will
see!"