ld have made the Frias basin dry down stream, from the bar up to
the influx of the Rio Negro, the case hidden in Torres' clothes would
already have been in his hand! His father's innocence would have been
recognized! Joam Dacosta, restored to liberty, would have again started
on the descent of the river, and what terrible trials would have been
avoided!

Benito had reached the bottom. His heavy shoes made the gravel on the
bed crunch beneath him. He was in some ten or fifteen feet of water, at
the base of the cliff, which was here very steep, and at the very spot
where Torres had disappeared.

Near him was a tangled mass of reeds and twigs and aquatic plants, all
laced together, which assuredly during the researches of the previous
day no pole could have penetrated. It was consequently possible that the
body was entangled among the submarine shrubs, and still in the place
where it had originally fallen.

Hereabouts, thanks to the eddy produced by the prolongation of one of
the spurs running out into the stream, the current was absolutely _nil_.
Benito guided his movements by those of the raft, which the long poles
of the Indians kept just over his head.

The light penetrated deep through the clear waters, and the magnificent
sun, shining in a cloudless sky, shot its rays down into them unchecked.
Under ordinary conditions, at a depth of some twenty feet in water,
the view becomes exceedingly blurred, but here the waters seemed to be
impregnated with a luminous fluid, and Benito was able to descend still
lower without the darkness concealing the river bed.

The young man slowly made his way along the bank. With his iron-shod
spear he probed the plants and rubbish accumulated along its foot.
Flocks of fish, if we can use such an expression, escaped on all sides
from the dense thickets like flocks of birds. It seemed as though the
thousand pieces of a broken mirror glimmered through the waters. At the
same time scores of crustaceans scampered over the sand, like huge ants
hurrying from their hills.

Notwithstanding that Benito did not leave a single point of the river
unexplored, he never caught sight of the object of his search. He
noticed, however, that the slope of the river bed was very abrupt, and
he concluded that Torres had rolled beyond the eddy toward the center
of the stream. If so, he would probably still recover the body, for the
current could hardly touch it at the depth, which was already great,
and se