Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon | Page 6

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!"
For the last time Torres glanced over the yellow paper, and then, after
carefully folding it, put it away into a little copper box which he used
for a purse. This box was about as big as a cigar case, and if what was
in it was all Torres possessed he would nowhere have been considered
a wealthy man. He had a few of all the coins of the neighboring
States--ten double-condors in gold of the United States of Colombia,
worth about a hundred francs; Brazilian reis, worth about as much;
golden sols of Peru, worth, say, double; some Chilian escudos, worth
fifty francs or more, and some smaller coins; but the lot would not
amount to more than five hundred francs, and Torres would have been
somewhat embarrassed had he been asked how or where he had got
them. One thing was certain, that for some months, after having
suddenly abandoned the trade of the slave hunter, which he carried on
in the province of Para, Torres had ascended the basin of the Amazon,
crossed the Brazilian frontier, and come into Peruvian territory. To
such a man the necessaries of life were but few; expenses he had
none--nothing for his lodging, nothing for his clothes. The forest
provided his food, which in the backwoods cost him naught. A few reis
were enough for his tobacco, which he bought at the mission stations or
in the villages, and for a trifle more he filled his flask with liquor. With
little he could go far.
When he had pushed the paper into the metal box, of which the lid shut
tightly with a snap, Torres, instead of putting it into the pocket of his
under-vest, thought to be extra careful, and placed it near him in a
hollow of a root of the tree beneath which he was sitting. This
proceeding, as it turned out, might have cost him dear.
It was very warm; the air was oppressive. If the church of the nearest

village had possessed a clock, the clock would have struck two, and,
coming with the wind, Torres would have heard it, for it was not more
than a couple of miles off. But he cared not as to time. Accustomed to
regulate his proceedings by the height of the sun, calculated with more
or less accuracy, he could scarcely be supposed to conduct himself with
military precision. He breakfasted or dined when he pleased or when he
could; he slept when and where sleep overtook him. If his table was not
always spread, his bed was always ready at the foot of some tree in the
open forest. And in other respects Torres was not difficult to please. He
had traveled during most of the morning, and having already eaten a
little, he began