Suddenly the window flew open with a violent push from without.
Joam started up; the souvenire of the past vanished like a shadow.
Benito leaped into the room; he was in the presence of his father,
and the next moment Manoel, tearing down the remaining bars, appeared
before him.
Joam Dacosta would have uttered a cry of surprise. Benito left him no
time to do so.
“Father,” he said, “the window grating is down. A rope leads to the
ground. A pirogue is waiting for you on the canal not a hundred yards
off. Araujo is there ready to take you far away from Manaos, on the
other bank of the Amazon where your track will never be discovered.
Father, you must escape this very moment! It was the judge’s own
suggestion!”
“It must be done!” added Manoel.
“Fly! I!–Fly a second time! Escape again?”
And with crossed arms, and head erect, Joam Dacosta stepped forward.
“Never!” he said, in a voice so firm that Benito and Manoel stood
bewildered.
The young men had never thought of a difficulty like this. They had
never reckoned on the hindrances to escape coming from the prisoner
himself.
Benito advanced to his father, and looking him straight in the face,
and taking both his hands in his, not to force him, but to try and
convince him, said:
“Never, did you say, father?”
“Never!”
“Father,” said Manoel–“for I also have the right to call you
father–listen to us! If we tell you that you ought to fly without
losing an instant, it is because if you remain you will be guilty
toward others, toward yourself!”
“To remain,” continued Benito, “is to remain to die! The order for
execution may come at any moment! If you imagine that the justice of
men will nullify a wrong decision, if you think it will rehabilitate
you whom it condemned twenty years since, you are mistaken! There is
hope no longer! You must escape! Come!”
By an irresistible impulse Benito seized his father and drew him
toward the window.
Joam Dacosta struggled from his son’s grasp and recoiled a second
time.
“To fly,” he answered, in the tone of a man whose resolution was
unalterable, “is to dishonor myself, and you with me! It would be a
confession of my guilt! Of my own free will I surrendered myself to
my country’s judges, and I will await their decision, whatever that
decision may be!”
“But the presumptions on which you trusted are insufficient,” replied
Manoel, “and the material proof of your innocence is still wanting!
If we tell you that you ought to fly, it is because Judge Jarriquez
himself told us so. You have now only this one chance left to escape
from death!”
“I will die, then,” said Joam, in a calm voice. “I will die
protesting against the decision which condemned me! The first time, a
few hours before the execution–I fled! Yes! I was then young. I had
all my life before me in which to struggle against man’s injustice!
But to save myself now, to begin again the miserable existence of a
felon hiding under a false name, whose every effort is required to
avoid the pursuit of the police, again to live the life of anxiety
which I have led for twenty-three years, and oblige you to share it
with me; to wait each day for a denunciation which sooner or later
must come, to wait for the claim for extradition which would follow
me to a foreign country! Am I to live for that? No! Never!”
“Father,” interrupted Benito, whose mind threatened to give way
before such obstinacy, “you shall fly! I will have it so!” And he
caught hold of Joam Dacosta, and tried by force to drag him toward
the window.
“No! no!”
“You wish to drive me mad?”
“My son,” exclaimed Joam Dacosta, “listen to me! Once already I
escaped from the prison at Villa Rica, and people believed I fled
from well-merited punishment. Yes, they had reason to think so. Well,
for the honor of the name which you bear I shall not do so again.”
Benito had fallen on his knees before his father. He held up his