Each man had but to imitate the movements of Yoyo. One of his brothers who, with a proud air, leaned on the handle of a pickaxe, was the last to cross over. Thus they landed on an islet of moss-covered boulders whose approach was guarded by this belt of mud. They made their way into a narrow circular space surrounded by rising ground.
"Here we are!" exclaimed Yoyo.
He spoke a few quick words to his brother, who inserted his pick under a stone of some considerable size which looked as if it were immovable, but all the same it almost at once swung on a pivot, exposing to view a crevice filled with thick moss.
The men shifted the moss and a leather bag could be seen. The magician bent forward and untied the complicated fastenings. It was apparent, that the bag was filled with gold dust. . . .
When, two days later, they crossed the Oyapok and, at the same time, the Brazilian frontier, Chéri-Bibi heaved a deep sigh of relief, and said to the Nut, pointing to the bag which Yoyo and one of his brothers had carried so far, and to the landscape which lay before them:
"Fortune and liberty!"
"It is to you that I shall owe both. I shall never forget it."
The Nut had first refused to accept this royal gift. He could not understand how it was that with such wealth, and friends like Yoyo, Chéri-Bibi remained so long at the penal settlement and was quite ready to go back to it.
"Come with me to Europe, or, if that is impossible, live here with Yoyo," he entreated him. "Anything is better than life in the convict settlement."
At first he received in reply merely one of those terrible grins which placed an impassable gulf between Chéri-Bibi and mankind. Those who saw that grin understood that something was on the other side of the abyss, something entirely remote from them, apart from them, apart from everything; some mysterious thing which they would never unravel, and they did not persist.