The old tapuyo knew it at a glance, and hailed it with a cheer. He knew the character of the craft. In such he had spent some of the best years of his life, himself one of the crew. Its presence was proof that they were once more upon their way, as the schooner was upon hers.
“Going down,” said the tapuyo, “going down to Gran Pará. I can tell by the way she is laden. Look yonder. Sarsaparilla, Vanilla, Cascarilla, Maulega de Tortugos, Sapucoy, and Tonka beans,—all will be found under that toldo of palm-leaves. Galliota ahoy! ahoy!”
The schooner was within short hailing distance.
“Lay to, and take passengers aboard! We want to go to Pará. Our craft isn’t suited for such a long voyage.”
The galliota answered the hail, and in ten minutes after the crew of the igarité was transferred to her decks. The canoe was abandoned, while the schooner continued on to the city of Gran Pará. She was not in the Solimoës itself, but one of its parallel branches, though, in two days after having taken the castaways aboard, she sailed out into the main stream, and thence glided merrily downward.
Those aboard of her were not the less gay,—the crew on discovering that among the passengers that they had picked up were the son and brother of their patron; and the passengers, that the craft that was carrying them to Gran Pará, as well as her cargo, was the property of Trevannion. The young Paraense found himself on board one of his father’s traders, while the ex-miner was completing his Amazonian voyage in a “bottom” belonging to his brother.
The tender attention which they received from the capatoz of the galliota restored their health and spirits, both sadly shattered in the Gapo; and instead of the robber’s garb and savage mien with which they emerged from that sombre abode, fit only for the abiding-place of beasts, birds, and reptiles, they soon recovered the cheerful looks and decent habiliments that befitted them for a return to civilisation.
A few words will tell the rest of this story.
The brothers, once more united,—each the owner of a son and daughter,—returned to their native land. Both widowers, they agreed to share the same roof,—that under which they had been born. The legal usurper could no longer keep them out of it. He was dead.
He had left behind him an only son, not a gentleman like himself, but a spendthrift. It ended in the ill-gotten patrimony coming once more into the market and under the hammer, the two Trevannions arriving just in time to arrest its descent upon the desk, and turn the “going, going” into “gone” in their own favour.