Kabanata Kabanata 1 · A CAPTAIN OF THE WOODS

. A CAPTAIN OF THE WOODS

_“P h y j s l y d d q f d z x g a s g z z q q e h x g k f n d r x u j u

g I o c y t d x v k s b x h h u y p o h d v y r y m h u h p u y d k j o

x p h e t o z l s l e t n p m v f f o v p d p a j x h y y n o j y g g a

y m e q y n f u q l n m v l y f g s u z m q I z t l b q q y u g s q e u

b v n r c r e d g r u z b l r m x y u h q h p z d r r g c r o h e p q x

u f I v v r p l p h o n t h v d d q f h q s n t z h h h n f e p m q k y

u u e x k t o g z g k y u u m f v I j d q d p z j q s y k r p l x h x q

r y m v k l o h h h o t o z v d k s p p s u v j h d.”_

The man who held in his hand the document of which this strange

assemblage of letters formed the concluding paragraph remained for some

moments lost in thought.

It contained about a hundred of these lines, with the letters at even

distances, and undivided into words. It seemed to have been written many

years before, and time had already laid his tawny finger on the sheet of

good stout paper which was covered with the hieroglyphics.

On what principle had these letters been arranged? He who held the paper

was alone able to tell. With such cipher language it is as with the

locks of some of our iron safes--in either case the protection is the

same. The combinations which they lead to can be counted by millions,

and no calculator’s life would suffice to express them. Some particular

“word” has to be known before the lock of the safe will act, and some

“cipher” is necessary before that cryptogram can be read.

He who had just reperused the document was but a simple “captain of the

woods.” Under the name of _“Capitaes do Mato”_ are known in Brazil those

individuals who are engaged in the recapture of fugitive slaves. The

institution dates from 1722. At that period anti-slavery ideas had

entered the minds of a few philanthropists, and more than a century had

to elapse before the mass of the people grasped and applied them. That

freedom was a right, that the very first of the natural rights of

man was to be free and to belong only to himself, would seem to be

self-evident, and yet thousands of years had to pass before the glorious

thought was generally accepted, and the nations of the earth had the

courage to proclaim it.

In 1852, the year in which our story opens, there were still slaves in

Brazil, and as a natural consequence, captains of the woods to pursue

them. For certain reasons of political economy the hour of general

emancipation had been delayed, but the black had at this date the right

to ransom himself, the children which were born to him were born free.

The day was not far distant when the magnificent country, into which

could be put three-quarters of the continent of Europe, would no longer

count a single slave among its ten millions of inhabitants.

The occupation of the captains of the woods was doomed, and at the

period we speak of the advantages obtainable from the capture of

fugitives were rapidly diminishing. While, however, the calling

continued sufficiently profitable, the captains of the woods formed

a peculiar class of adventurers, principally composed of freedmen and

deserters--of not very enviable reputation. The slave hunters in fact

belonged to the dregs of society, and we shall not be far wrong in

assuming that the man with the cryptogram was a fitting comrade for his

fellow _“capitaes do mato.”_ Torres--for that was his name--unlike the

majority of his companions, was neither half-breed, Indian, nor negro.

He was a white of Brazilian origin, and had received a better education

than befitted his present condition. One of those unclassed men who are

found so frequently in the distant countries of the New World, at a

time when the Brazilian law still excluded mulattoes and others of mixed

blood from certain employments, it was evident that if such exclusion

had affected him, it had done so on account of his worthless character,

and not because of his birth.

Torres at the present moment was not, however, in Brazil. He had just

passed the frontier, and was wandering in the forests of Peru, from

which issue the waters of the Upper Amazon.

He was a man of about thirty years of age, on whom the fatigues of a

precarious existence seemed, thanks to an exceptional temperament and

an iron constitution, to have had no effect. Of middle height, broad

shoulders, regular features, and decided gait, his face was tanned with

the scorching air of the tropics. He had a thick black beard, and eyes

lost under contracting eyebrows, giving that swift but hard glance

so characteristic of insolent natures. Clothed as backwoodsmen are

generally clothed, not over elaborately, his garments bore witness to

long and roughish wear. On his head, stuck jauntily on one side, was

a leather hat with a large brim. Trousers he had of coarse wool, which

were tucked into the tops of the thick, heavy boots which formed the

most substantial part of his attire, and over all, and hiding all, was a

faded yellowish poncho.

But if Torres was a captain of the woods it was evident that he was not

now employed in that capacity, his means of attack and defense being

obviously insufficient for any one engaged in the pursuit of the blacks.

No firearms--neither gun nor revolver. In his belt only one of those

weapons, more sword than hunting-knife, called a _“manchetta,”_ and

in addition he had an _“enchada,”_ which is a sort of hoe, specially

employed in the pursuit of the tatous and agoutis which abound in the

forests of the Upper Amazon, where there is generally little to fear

from wild beasts.

On the 4th of May, 1852, it happened, then, that our adventurer was

deeply absorbed in the reading of the document on which his eyes

were fixed, and, accustomed as he was to live in the forests of South

America, he was perfectly indifferent to their splendors. Nothing could

distract his attention; neither the constant cry of the howling monkeys,

which St. Hillaire has graphically compared to the ax of the woodman as

he strikes the branches of the trees, nor the sharp jingle of the rings

of the rattlesnake (not an aggressive reptile, it is true, but one of

the most venomous); neither the bawling voice of the horned toad, the

most hideous of its kind, nor even the solemn and sonorous croak of

the bellowing frog, which, though it cannot equal the bull in size, can

surpass him in noise.

Torres heard nothing of all these sounds, which form, as it were, the

complex voice of the forests of the New World. Reclining at the foot

of a magnificent tree, he did not even admire the lofty boughs of that

_“pao ferro,”_ or iron wood, with its somber bark, hard as the metal

which it replaces in the weapon and utensil of the Indian savage. No.

Lost in thought, the captain of the woods turned the curious paper again

and again between his fingers. With the cipher, of which he had the

secret, he assigned to each letter its true value. He read, he verified

the sense of those lines, unintelligible to all but him, and then he

smiled--and a most unpleasant smile it was.

Then he murmured some phrases in an undertone which none in the solitude

of the Peruvian forests could hear, and which no one, had he been

anywhere else, would have heard.

“Yes,” said he, at length, “here are a hundred lines very neatly

written, which, for some one that I know, have an importance that is

undoubted. That somebody is rich. It is a question of life or death

for him, and looked at in every way it will cost him something.” And,

scrutinizing the paper with greedy eyes, “At a conto[1] only for each

word of this last sentence it will amount to a considerable sum, and it

is this sentence which fixes the price. It sums up the entire document.

It gives their true 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.”

[1] One thousand reis are equal to three francs, and a conto

of reis is worth three thousand francs.

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 to feel the want of a snooze. Two or three hours’ rest

would, he thought, put him in a state to continue his road, and so he

laid himself down on the grass as comfortably as he could, and waited

for sleep beneath the ironwood-tree.

Torres was not one of those people who drop off to sleep without certain

preliminaries. He was in the habit of drinking a drop or two of strong

liquor, and of then smoking a pipe; the spirits, he said, overexcited

the brain, and the tobacco smoke agreeably mingled with the general

haziness of his reverie.

Torres commenced, then, by applying to his lips a flask which he carried

at his side; it contained the liquor generally known under the name of

_“chica”_ in Peru, and more particularly under that of _“caysuma”_ in

the Upper Amazon, to which fermented distillation of the root of the

sweet manioc the captain had added a good dose of _“tafia”_ or native

rum.

When Torres had drunk a little of this mixture he shook the flask, and

discovered, not without regret, that it was nearly empty.

“Must get some more,” he said very quietly.

Then taking out a short wooden pipe, he filled it with the coarse

and bitter tobacco of Brazil, of which the leaves belong to that

old _“petun”_ introduced into France by Nicot, to whom we owe the

popularization of the most productive and widespread of the solanaceae.

This native tobacco had little in common with the fine qualities of our

present manufacturers; but Torres was not more difficult to please in

this matter than in others, and so, having filled his pipe, he struck a

match and applied the flame to a piece of that stick substance which

is the secretion of certain of the hymenoptera, and is known as “ants’

amadou.” With the amadou he lighted up, and after about a dozen whiffs

his eyes closed, his pipe escaped from his fingers, and he fell asleep.