The Collected Works of Jules Verne: 36 Novels and Short Stories (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics)

by Jules Verne

  In some of the less wooded parts, in places where the breaks were tolerably spacious, they saw several pairs of ostriches, of the species known as _"naudus,"_ from four to five feet high, accompanied by their inseparable _"seriemas,"_ a sort of turkey, infinitely better from an edible point of view than the huge birds they escort.

  "See what that wretched promise costs me," sighed Benito, as, at a gesture from his sister, he replaced under his arm the gun which had instinctively gone up to his shoulder.

  "We ought to respect the seriemas," said Manoel, "for they are great destroyers of the snakes."

  "Just as we ought to respect the snakes," replied Benito, "because they eat the noxious insects, and just as we ought the insects because they live on smaller insects more offensive still. At that rate we ought to respect everything."

  But the instinct of the young sportsman was about to be put to a still more rigorous trial. The woods became of a sudden full of game. Swift stags and graceful roebucks scampered off beneath the bushes, and a well-aimed bullet would assuredly have stopped them. Here and there turkeys showed themselves with their milk and coffee-colored plumage; and peccaries, a sort of wild pig highly appreciated by lovers of venison, and agouties, which are the hares and rabbits of Central America; and tatous belonging to the order of edentates, with their scaly shells of patterns of mosaic.

  And truly Benito showed more than virtue, and even genuine heroism, when he came across some tapirs, called "antas" in Brazil, diminutives of the elephant, already nearly undiscoverable on the banks of the Upper Amazon and its tributaries, pachyderms so dear to the hunters for their rarity, so appreciated by the gourmands for their meat, superior far to beef, and above all for the protuberance on the nape of the neck, which is a morsel fit for a king.

  His gun almost burned his fingers, but faithful to his promise he kept it quiet.

  But yet--and he cautioned his sister about this--the gun would go off in spite of him, and probably register a master-stroke in sporting annals, if within range there should come a _"tamandoa assa,"_ a kind of large and very curious ant-eater.

  Happily the big ant-eater did not show himself, neither did any panthers, leopards, jaguars, guepars, or cougars, called indifferently ounces in South America, and to whom it is not advisable to get too near.

  "After all," said Benito, who stopped for an instant, "to walk is very well, but to walk without an object----"

  "Without an object!" replied his sister; "but our object is to see, to admire, to visit for the last time these forests of Central America, which we shall not find again in Para, and to bid them a fast farewell."

  "Ah! an idea!"

  It was Lina who spoke.

  "An idea of Lina's can be no other than a silly one," said Benito, shaking his head.

  "It is unkind, brother," said Minha, "to make fun of Lina when she has been thinking how to give our walk the object which you have just regretted it lacks."

  "Besides, Mr. Benito, I am sure my idea will please you," replied the mulatto.

  "Well, what is it?" asked Minha.

  "You see that liana?"

  And Lina pointed to a liana of the _"cipos"_ kind, twisted round a gigantic sensitive mimosa, whose leaves, light as feathers, shut up at the least disturbance.

  "Well?" said Benito.

  "I proposed," replied Minha, "that we try to follow that liana to its very end."

  "It is an idea, and it is an object!" observed Benito, "to follow this liana, no matter what may be the obstacles, thickets, underwood, rocks, brooks, torrents, to let nothing stop us, not even----"

  "Certainly, you are right, brother!" said Minha; "Lina is a trifle absurd."

  "Come on, then!" replied her brother; "you say that Lina is absurd so as to say that Benito is absurd to approve of it!"

  "Well, both of you are absurd, if that will amuse you," returned Minha. "Let us follow the liana!"

  "You are not afraid?" said Manoel.

  "Still objections!" shouted Benito.

  "Ah, Manoel! you would not speak like that if you were already on your way and Minha was waiting for you at the end."

  "I am silent," replied Manoel; "I have no more to say. I obey. Let us follow the liana!"

  And off they went as happy as children home for their holidays.

  This vegetable might take them far if they determined to follow it to its extremity, like the thread of Ariadne, as far almost as that which the heiress of Minos used to lead her from the labyrinth, and perhaps entangle them more deeply.

  It was in fact a creeper of the salses family, one of the cipos known under the name of the red _"japicanga,"_ whose length sometimes measures several miles. But, after all, they could leave it when they liked.

  The cipo passed from one tree to another without breaking its continuity, sometimes twisting round the trunks, sometimes garlanding the branches, here jumping form a dragon-tree to a rosewood, then from a gigantic chestnut, the _"Bertholletia excelsa,"_ to some of the wine palms, _"baccabas,"_ whose branches have been appropriately compared by Agassiz to long sticks of coral flecked with green. Here round _"tucumas,"_ or ficuses, capriciously twisted like centenarian olive-trees, and of which Brazil had fifty-four varieties; here round the kinds of euphorbias, which produce caoutchouc, _"gualtes,"_ noble palm-trees, with slender, graceful, and glossy stems; and cacao-trees, which shoot up of their own accord on the banks of the Amazon and its tributaries, having different melastomas, some with red flowers and others ornamented with panicles of whitish berries.

  But the halts! the shouts of cheating! when the happy company thought they had lost their guiding thread! For it was necessary to go back and disentangle it from the knot of parasitic plants.

  "There it is!" said Lina, "I see it!"

  "You are wrong," replied Minha; "that is not it, that is a liana of another kind."

  "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.

  CHAPTER VIII. THE JANGADA

  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 occu
rs 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.