Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon. Жюль Верн
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.
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