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The port was full of canoes, large and small, from the montaria, with its arched awning of woven lianas and Maranta leaves, to the two-masted cuberta of the peddling trader, who had resorted to the place in the hope of trafficking with settlers coming from remote sitios to attend the festival.
The strong current at a distance of thirty or forty yards from the coast steadied the cuberta head to stream, and kept us from drifting ashore. We all slept in the open air, as the heat of the cabins was stifling in the early part of the night. Penna, Senhora Katita, and I slung our hammocks in triangle between the mainmast and two stout poles fixed in the raised deck.
He shook his fists, he behaved as if beside himself with rage, and the lieutenant, white and still, stood looking at him. The crew appeared forward, with amazed faces. Suddenly, in a pause of this outbreak, the lieutenant came to some heroic decision, saluted, drew himself together and clambered upon the deck of the cuberta. "Ah!" said Gerilleau, and his mouth shut like a trap.
When projecting points of land were encountered, it was impossible, with our weak crew, to pull the cuberta against the whirling torrents which set round them; and in such cases we had to cross the river, drifting often with the current, a mile or two lower down on the opposite shore.
I found it the better course now to send Jose and one of the men forward in the montaria with John Aracu, and remain myself with the cuberta and our other man to collect in the neighbouring forest. We stayed here four days, one of the boats returning each evening from the upper river with the produce of the day's chase of my huntsmen.
The island of Capitari and another group of islets succeeding it, called Jacare, on the opposite side, helped also to contract at this point the breadth of the river, which was now not more than about three miles. The little cuberta almost flew along this coast, there being no perceptible current, past extensive swamps, margined with thick floating grasses.
My return journey to Para afforded many incidents characteristic of Amazonian travelling. I left Cameta on the 16th of July. My luggage was embarked in the morning in the Santa Rosa, a vessel of the kind called cuberta, or covered canoe. The cuberta is very much used on these rivers.
Our ropes snapped, the sails flew to rags, and the vessel, which we now found was deficient in ballast, heeled over frightfully. Contrary to Jose's advice, I ran the cuberta into a little bay, thinking to cast anchor there and wait for the boat coming up with the wind; but the anchor dragged on the smooth sandy bottom, and the vessel went broadside on to the rocky beach.
The owner, an old white-haired Portuguese trader of Ega named Daniel Cardozo, was then at Barra attending the assizes as juryman, a public duty performed without remuneration, which took him six weeks away from his business. He was about to leave Barra himself, in a small boat, and recommended me to send forward my heavy baggage in the cuberta and make the journey with him.
The cuberta, a vague black triangle, rocked about in the steamer's wake, her sails bobbing and flapping, and the black smoke from the funnels, spark-lit ever and again, streamed over her swaying masts. Gerilleau's mind was inclined to run on the unkind things the lieutenant had said in the heat of his last fever. "He says I murdered 'im," he protested. "It is simply absurd.
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