pale, and Manoel supporting him, for the unfortunate young man had
hardly strength to support himself.
The magistrate quickly arose.
“What is it, gentlemen? What do you want?” he asked.
“The cipher! the cipher!” exclaimed Benito, mad with grief–“the
cipher of the document.”
“Do you know it, then?” shouted the judge.
“No, sir,” said Manoel. “But you?”
“Nothing! nothing!”
“Nothing?” gasped Benito, and in a paroxysm of despair he took a
knife from his belt and would have plunged it into his breast had not
the judge and Manoel jumped forward and managed to disarm him.
“Benito,” said Jarriquez, ina voice which he tried to keep calm, “if
you father cannot escape the expiation of a crime which is not his,
you could do something better than kill yourself.”
“What?” said Benito.
“Try and save his life!”
“How?”
“That is for you to discover,” answered the magistrate, “and not for
me to say.”
CHAPTER XVI
PREPARATIONS
ON THE FOLLOWING day, the 30th of August, Benito and Manoel talked
matters over together. They had understood the thought to which the
judge had not dared to give utterance in their presence, and were
engaged in devising some means by which the condemned man could
escape the penalty of the law.
Nothing else was left for them to do. It was only too certain that
for the authorities at Rio Janeiro the undeciphered document would
nave no value whatever, that it would be a dead letter, that the
first verdict which declared Joam Dacosta the perpetrator of the
crime at Tijuco would not be set aside, and that, as in such cases no
commutation of the sentence was possible, the order for his execution
would inevitably be received.
Once more, then, Joam Dacosta would have to escape by flight from an
unjust imprisonment.
It was at the outset agreed between the two young men that the secret
should be carefully kept, and that neither Yaquita nor Minha should
be informed of preparations, which would probably only give rise to
hopes destined never to be realized. Who could tell if, owing to some
unforeseen circumstance, the attempt at escape would not prove a
miserable failure?
The presence of Fragoso on such an occasion would have been most
valuable. Discreet and devoted, his services would have been most
welcome to the two young fellows; but Fragoso had not reappeared.
Lina, when asked, could only say that she knew not what had become of
him, nor why he had left the raft without telling her anything about
it.
And assuredly, had Fragoso foreseen that things would have turned out
as they were doing, he would never have left the Dacosta family on an
expedition which appeared to promise no serious result. Far better
for him to have assisted in the escape of the doomed man than to have
hurried off in search of the former comrades of Torres!
But Fragoso was away, and his assistance had to be dispensed with.
At daybreak Benito and Manoel left the raft and proceeded to Manaos.
They soon reached the town, and passed through its narrow streets,
which at that early hour were quite deserted. In a few minutes they
arrived in front of the prison. The waste ground, amid which the old
convent which served for a house of detention was built, was
traversed by them in all directions, for they had come to study it
with the utmost care.
Fifty-five feet from the ground, in an angle of the building, they
recognized the window of the cell in which Joam Dacosta was confined.
The window was secured with iron bars in a miserable state of repair,
which it would be easy to tear down or cut through if they could only
get near enough. The badly jointed stones in the wall, which were
crumbled away every here and there, offered many a ledge for the feet
to rest on, if only a rope could be fixed to climb up by. One of the
bars had slipped out of its socket, and formed a hook over which it
might be possible to throw a rope. That done, one or two of the bars
could be removed, so as to permit a man to get through. Benito and