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“The march back took less time than the march out,” the commissioner growls.

“Come over here and have a look at this!” the doctor in the white smock calls to them from one corner.

The group of civilians and the lieutenant walk down the line of hammocks to him. The doctor is wearing an indigo-blue army uniform underneath his smock. He has removed the bandage of a soldier with Indian features who is writhing in pain, and is contemplating the man’s belly with intense interest. He points to it as though it were a rare, precious object: at the man’s groin is a purulent hole the size of a fist, with coagulated blood at the edges and pulsing flesh in the middle.

“An explosive bullet!” the doctor exclaims enthusiastically, dusting the swollen wound with a fine white powder. “On penetrating the body, it explodes like shrapnel, destroys the tissue, and produces a gaping wound like this. The only time I’ve ever come across such a thing is in the British Army Manual. How is it possible that those wretched devils possess such modern weapons? Even the Brazilian Army is not equipped with them.”

“See that, Senhor Commissioner?” Lieutenant Pires Ferreira says triumphantly. “They were armed to the teeth. They had rifles, carbines, long-barreled muskets, machetes, daggers, clubs. As for us, on the other hand, our Mannlichers jammed and…”

But the man who has been babbling in delirium about confession and holy oils is now shouting at the top of his voice and raving about sacred images, the banner of the Divine, the whistles. He does not appear to be wounded; he is tied to a post, in a uniform with fewer signs of wear and tear than the lieutenant’s. As he sees the doctor and the civilians approaching, he implores them with tears in his eyes: “Confession, sirs! I beg you! I beg you!”

“Is he the medical officer of your company, Dr. Antônio Alves dos Santos?” the doctor in the white smock asks. “Why have you tied him up like that?”

“He tried to kill himself, sir,” Pires Ferreira stammers. “He attempted to put a bullet through his head and by some miracle he missed. He’s been like that since the encounter at Uauá, and I was at a loss as to how to deal with him. Instead of being a help to us, he turned into one more problem, especially during the retreat.”

“Kindly withdraw if you will, sirs,” the doctor in the white smock says. “Leave me alone with him, and I’ll calm him down.”

As the lieutenant and the civilians obey his wishes, the high-pitched, inquisitive, peremptory voice of the man who has interrupted the explanations several times is again heard: “How many dead and wounded were there in all, Lieutenant? In your company and among the outlaws?”

“Ten dead and sixteen wounded among my men,” Pires Ferreira replies with an impatient gesture. “The enemy had at least a hundred casualties. All this is noted in the report that I gave you, sir.”

“I’m not a member of the commission. I’m a reporter from the Jornal de Notícias, in Bahia,” the man says.

He does not resemble the government officials or the doctor in the white smock with whom he has come here. Young, nearsighted, with thick eyeglasses. He does not take notes with a pencil but with a goose-quill pen. He is dressed in a pair of trousers coming apart at the seams, an off-white jacket, a cap with a visor, and all of his apparel seems fake, wrong, out of place on his awkward body. He is holding a clipboard with a number of sheets of paper and dips his goose-quill pen in an inkwell, with the cork of a wine bottle for a cap, that is fastened to the sleeve of his jacket. He looks more or less like a scarecrow.

“I have traveled six hundred kilometers merely to ask you these questions, Lieutenant Pires Ferreira,” he says. And he sneezes.

Big João was born near the sea, on a sugarcane plantation in Recôncavo, the owner of which, Sir Adalberto de Gumúcio, was a great lover of horses. He boasted of possessing the most spirited sorrels and the mares with the most finely turned ankles in all of Bahia