o get the canoe off.

My men used pretty language. That small accident was lucky for us. The
shouts of my men attracted to the bank a passing man. Half-scared, a wild
figure of a mulatto with long, unkempt hair and beard, his body covered
by what must have once been a suit of clothes, stood gazing at us,
clutching a double-barrelled gun in his hands.

"Is there a revolution in Matto Grosso?" he inquired when I caught sight
of him. "Why do you fly the red flag?"

"That is not the flag of revolution, that is the flag of peace. It is the
English flag."

"The English flag! The English flag!" he exclaimed, running down the
slope of the river bank. "You are English!... Oh, sir, take me with you!
I entreat you take me with you! I am an escaped slave.... I owe my master
much money.... I can never repay it.... I am a seringueiro. My estrada is
some miles down the river. I have been there alone suffering for months.
I had no more food, nothing. There is very little fish in the river. The
life is too terrible. I can stand it no more. If you do not take me with
you I shall kill myself."

I tried to persuade the strange figure to return to his master--the
master lived in comfort in the city of Cuyaba. "If you chose to borrow
money and sell yourself, it was only right that you should repay your
debt." That was the only way I could look at it. But the man would not
hear of it. If I did not take him he would kill himself--there, before
me, he repeated; that was all.

So difficult a dilemma to solve--at so inconvenient a moment, when we
were as busy as busy could be, trying to disentangle the canoe--was
rather tiresome. The strange man, having laid his gun upon the ground,
helped us with all his might in our work. When the canoe got off, the
strange man, gun and all, jumped clumsily into her and nearly capsized
her a second time. He implored me with tears in his eyes to take him
along. He would work day and night; he would present me with his
double-barrelled gun (an old muzzle-loader); he did not want pay--he only
wanted to get freed from his master, who, he said, robbed and ill-treated
him.

"Do you swear upon all that is most sacred that you have made up your
mind not to go back to your master?"

"Yes. If you say 'No' to me, I shall kill myself now."

Benedicto--that was his name--spoke with quiet determination.

"Very good, Benedicto. You can remain. What is more, you shall receive
from this moment the same pay as the ot