What he saw was a deformed, swollen, bloody lump of a man, devoured by fever and babbling deliriously in a low voice. Alves moved closer and looked over Longhi’s livid body.

“That man is dead,” he said.

“No, he’s not dead,” countered the laborer. “His heart is beating.”

“How can he have survived?” murmured Alves to himself. “What’s wrong with him?”

“It looks like he’s got broken ribs.”

Alves pondered for a moment and then went back to the camp.

“Go and get those two characters!” he ordered.

When he saw the two dying men before him—two vigorous males that in two hours his despotic cruelty had transformed into two wretched slabs of humanity—a ray of triumph, of all-embracing will, lit up his gaze. The violent jolts of the wagon, aggravating the Indian’s delirium, had made Longhi come to; he looked at Alves for an instant and then closed his eyes.

“All right!” said Alves calmly. “Now you’ve had your lesson, seu Longhi. I hope you profit from it, and learn to show a little respect for men who haven’t done you a bit of harm. I assume something must have happened to you when the stones sent you flying and that maybe you’re going to die. But anyway I’ve got no desire to live under the same roof with a thiev-ing in-spec-tor; that’s how it is, seu Longhi. So right now I’m going to have you taken to the port and left on the bluff, and if within a week the steamboat comes by, all the better for you.”

A moment later Longhi was riding the wagon again, unconscious, and was put down not at the port but at the hut of the wagon-driver, who took pity on him, at the risk of facing Alves’ wrath. But when he told him what he’d done, Alves shrugged his shoulders.

“He won’t live for two hours anyhow.”

But Longhi lived, and six months later, as the days went by, it was Alves’ fate to confront Longhi again, but perhaps in circumstances less favorable to him.

How? Very shortly we’ll see.

Miraculously saved from the explosion, Longhi had come out of it with a broken rib and horrible contusions on his back, besides the three fingers lopped off by the Brazilian’s bullet. The old woodsman took care of him like a father, and Longhi spent three weeks hovering between life and death. But his robust constitution won out, and finally one resplendent morning he was able to go outdoors, where he took a seat on a log. He was still very weak, but the warmth in the air and the sun that gilded the woods soothed him like a life-renewing balm; and for the first time after two months of fever, delirium, and lethargy, he was able to think clearly.

In the nightmares he had in those two months the sinister figure of Alves had occupied a prominent place.

He saw himself tied down over the explosive charge and the Brazilian laughing and kicking him in the head. And then the cowardly blow of the whip, and the wailing of the Indian being eaten alive. All this torment, in a man who spent two months reliving extreme offenses, had profoundly embittered his spirit. In vain did he try to forget; an implacable thirst for revenge constricted his whole being. Oh, to make him suffer for a minute, even just a second, what he had suffered for two months! He dreamed of something monstrous for Alves, much more maddening than the infernal anthill, something that would yank bestial moans from his tortured flesh and soul . . .

Here he stopped abruptly in the course of his thoughts.

“Yes,” he murmured. “Why not? Bestial . . . Ah, now we’ll see! Juan!” he called to the woodsman, who that morning had the shivers and was trembling by the fire.

“Boss!”

“Tell me: have you ever seen a tame jaguar?”

“Never; can’t be done. A puma, yes.”

“Yes, I know. But have you seen a tamed puma?”

“I have. And not just one, a lot of them. What do you want to know for?”

“Nothing; just curious.”

The logger looked at him intently.

“My compadre Cipriano has one,” he added.

Longhi made a quick gesture, and that terrible pallor out of the past, when he was the man who made Alves lower his eyes, swept over his face.

But this time Longhi’s pallor was due to physical debility. He lowered his head and shortly asked indifferently:

“Is it big?”

“No; still a kitten.”

“Ah!”

Another pause. All of a sudden the ex-lumber-inspector stood up, and walking laboriously up to the logger, put his hand on his shoulder.

“Listen, Juan. I need to have your compadre sell me the lion.” His voice was still broken, but his firm and tranquil look was the same as before. “I’ve got nothing to give him now; you can’t doubt that. But I give you my word that I’ll pay him for it.”

“I know, boss,” murmured Juan with deep respect. “You don’t need to tell me that.”

“It doesn’t matter. Better to say it.