Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon | Page 9

stop him as he ran or

climbed, but Torres possessed no firearm. His sword-knife and hoe
were useless unless he could get near enough to hit him.
It soon became evident that the monkey could not be reached unless by
surprise. Hence Torres found it necessary to employ cunning in dealing
with the mischievous animal. To stop, to hide himself behind some tree
trunk, to disappear under a bush, might induce the guariba to pull up
and retrace his steps, and there was nothing else for Torres to try. This
was what he did, and the pursuit commenced under these conditions;
but when the captain of the woods disappeared, the monkey patiently
waited until he came into sight again, and at this game Torres fatigued
himself without result.
"Confound the guariba!" he shouted at length. "There will be no end to
this, and he will lead me back to the Brazilian frontier. If only he would
let go of my case! But no! The jingling of the money amuses him. Oh,
you thief! If I could only get hold of you!"
And Torres recommenced the pursuit, and the monkey scuttled off with
renewed vigor.
An hour passed in this way without any result. Torres showed a
persistency which was quite natural. How without this document could
he get his money?
And then anger seized him. He swore, he stamped, he threatened the
guariba. That annoying animal only responded by a chuckling which
was enough to put him beside himself.
And then Torres gave himself up to the chase. He ran at top speed,
entangling himself in the high undergrowth, among those thick
brambles and interlacing creepers, across which the guariba passed like
a steeplechaser. Big roots hidden beneath the grass lay often in the way.
He stumbled over them and again started in pursuit. At length, to his
astonishment, he found himself shouting:
"Come here! come here! you robber!" as if he could make him
understand him.

His strength gave out, breath failed him, and he was obliged to stop.
"Confound it!" said he, "when I am after runaway slaves across the
jungle they never give me such trouble as this! But I will have you, you
wretched monkey! I will go, yes, I will go as far as my legs will carry
me, and we shall see!"
The guariba had remained motionless when he saw that the adventurer
had ceased to pursue him. He rested also, for he had nearly reached that
degree of exhaustion which had forbidden all movement on the part of
Torres.
He remained like this during ten minutes, nibbling away at two or three
roots, which he picked off the ground, and from time to time he rattled
the case at his ear.
Torres, driven to distraction, picked up the stones within his reach, and
threw them at him, but did no harm at such a distance.
But he hesitated to make a fresh start. On one hand, to keep on in chase
of the monkey with so little chance of reaching him was madness. On
the other, to accept as definite this accidental interruption to all his
plans, to be not only conquered, but cheated and hoaxed by a dumb
animal, was maddening. And in the meantime Torres had begun to
think that when the night came the robber would disappear without
trouble, and he, the robbed one, would find a difficulty in retracing his
way through the dense forest. In fact, the pursuit had taken him many
miles from the bank of the river, and he would even now find it
difficult to return to it.
Torres hesitated; he tried to resume his thoughts with coolness, and
finally, after giving vent to a last imprecation, he was about to abandon
all idea of regaining possession of his case, when once more, in spite of
himself, there flashed across him the thought of his document, the
remembrance of all that scaffolding on which his future hopes
depended, on which he had counted so much; and he resolved to make
another effort.
Then he got up.

The guariba got up too.
He made several steps in advance.
The monkey made as many in the rear, but this time, instead of
plunging more deeply into the forest, he stopped at the foot of an
enormous ficus--the tree of which the different kinds are so numerous
all over the Upper Amazon basin.
To seize the trunk with his four hands, to climb with the agility of a
clown who is acting the monkey, to hook on with his prehensile tail to
the first branches, which stretched away horizontally at forty feet from
the ground, and to hoist himself to the top of the tree, to the point
where the higher branches just bent beneath its weight, was only sport
to