The young man slowly made his way along the bank. With his iron-shod
spear he probed the plants and rubbish accumulated along its foot.
Flocks of fish, if we can use such an expression, escaped on all
sides from the dense thickets like flocks of birds. It seemed as
though the thousand pieces of a broken mirror glimmered through the
waters. At the same time scores of crustaceans scampered over the
sand, like huge ants hurrying from their hills.
Notwithstanding that Benito did not leave a single point of the river
unexplored, he never caught sight of the object of his search. He
noticed, however, that the slope of the river bed was very abrupt,
and he concluded that Torres had rolled beyond the eddy toward the
center of the stream. If so, he would probably still recover the
body, for the current could hardly touch it at the depth, which was
already great, and seemed sensibly to increase. Benito then resolved
to pursue his investigations on the side where he had begun to probe
the vegetation. This was why he continued to advance in that
direction, and the raft had to follow him during a quarter of an
hour, as had been previously arranged.
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