"
"We cannot do that," replied Manoel. "This very day we ought to
succeed."
"If, on the contrary," continued the pilot, "the corpse has got stuck
among the reeds and vegetation at the foot of the bank, we shall not
be an hour before we find it."
"To work, then!" answered Benito.
There was but one way of working. The boats approached the bank, and
the Indians, furnished with long poles, began to sound every part of
the river at the base of the bluff which had served for the scene of
combat.
The place had been easily recognized. A track of blood stained the
declivity in its chalky part, and ran perpendicularly down it into
the water; and there many a clot scattered on the reeds indicated the
very spot where the corpse had disappeared.
About fifty feet down stream a point jutted out from the riverside
and kept back the waters in a kind of eddy, as in a large basin.
There was no current whatever near the shore, and the reeds shot up
out of the river unbent. Every hope then existed that Torres' body
had not been carried away by the main stream.
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