"Manoel," replied Benito, who seized on the last hope, "you are right!
The corpse of Torres must be recovered! We will ransack the whole of
this part of the river, if necessary, but we will recover it!"

The pilot Araujo was then summoned and informed of what they were going
to do.

"Good!" replied he; "I know all the eddies and currents where the Rio
Negro and the Amazon join, and we shall succeed in recovering the body.
Let us take two pirogues, two ubas, a dozen of our Indians, and make a
start."

Padre Passanha was then coming out of Yaquita's room.

Benito went to him, and in a few words told him what they were going to
do to get possession of the document. "Say nothing to my mother or my
sister," he added; "if this last hope fails it will kill them!"

"Go, my lad, go," replied Passanha, "and may God help you in your
search."

Five minutes afterward the four boats started from the raft. After
descending the Rio Negro they arrived near the bank of the Amazon, at
the very place where Torres, mortally wounded, had disappeared beneath
the waters of the stream.

CHAPTER VIII. THE FIRST SEARCH

THE SEARCH had to commence at once, and that for two weighty reasons.

The first of these was--and this was a question of life or death--that
this proof of Joam Dacosta's innocence must be produced before the
arrival of the order from Rio Janeiro. Once the identity of the prisoner
was established, it was impossible that such an order could be other
than the order for his execution.

The second was that the body of Torres should be got out of the water
as quickly as possible so as to regain undamaged the metal case and the
paper it ought to contain.

At this juncture Araujo displayed not only zeal and intelligence, but
also a perfect knowledge of the state of the river at its confluence
with the Rio Negro.

"If Torres," he said to the young men, "had been from the first carried
away by the current, we should have to drag the river throughout a
large area, for we shall have a good many days to wait for his body to
reappear on the surface through the effects of decomposition."

"We cannot do that," replied Manoel. "This very day we ought to
succeed."

"If, on the contrary," continued the pilot, "the corpse has got stuck
among the reeds and vegetation at the foot of the bank, we shall not be
an hour before we find it."

"To work, then!" answered Benito.

There was but one way of working. The boats approac