reputation which I have acquired
in these parts, the question of reis, and not that of conceit, being,
you understand, the principal."

"Go on, then, friend," replied Joam Garral laughingly; "but be quick!
we can only remain a day at Tabatinga, and we shall start to-morrow at
dawn."

"I will not lose a minute," answered Fragoso--"just time to take the
tools of my profession, and I am off."

"Off you go, Fragoso," said Joam, "and may the reis rain into your
pocket!"

"Yes, and that is a proper sort of rain, and there can never be too much
of it for your obedient servant."

And so saying Fragoso rapidly moved away.

A moment afterward the family, with the exception of Joam, went ashore.
The jangada was able to approach near enough to the bank for the landing
to take place without much trouble. A staircase, in a miserable state,
cut in the cliff, allowed the visitors to arrive on the crest of the
plateau.

Yaquita and her party were received by the commandant of the fort, a
poor fellow who, however, knew the laws of hospitality, and offered
them some breakfast in his cottage. Here and there passed and repassed
several soldiers on guard, while on the threshold of the barrack
appeared a few children, with their mothers of Ticuna blood, affording
very poor specimens of the mixed race.

In place of accepting the breakfast of the sergeant, Yaquita invited the
commandant and his wife to come and have theirs on board the jangada.

The commandant did not wait for a second invitation, and an appointment
was made for eleven o'clock. In the meantime Yaquita, her daughter,
and the young mulatto, accompanied by Manoel, went for a walk in the
neighborhood, leaving Benito to settle with the commandant about the
tolls--he being chief of the custom-house as well as of the military
establishment.

That done, Benito, as was his wont, strolled off with his gun into the
adjoining woods. On this occasion Manoel had declined to accompany him.
Fragoso had left the jangada, but instead of mounting to the fort he had
made for the village, crossing the ravine which led off from the right
on the level of the bank. He reckoned more on the native custom of
Tabatinga than on that of the garrison. Doubtless the soldiers' wives
would not have wished better than to have been put under his hands,
but the husbands scarcely cared to part with a few reis for the sake of
gratifying the whims of their coquettish partners.

Among the natives it wa