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At eleven that night, the captain retired to his berth. Mariana sat on the floor with her face resting on her knees, overcome by that day's exhaustion. In the cabin, Simão watched the hanging light sway. Perhaps he heard the wind as a lament in the silence of earth and sky.
At midnight, he took Teresa's bundle of letters in a trembling hand. He broke the first letter's seal and read it by the lamp's dim light. Teresa said that she would already be dead and at rest when he read the letter. She ought to spare him the torture, but writing on her final night comforted her. Only she would tell him of her own death.
Far from the convent, no voice would tell him that she awaited him in the next world and prayed for him. Perhaps he would rather imagine her alive, awaiting his return. Yet Teresa could no longer live after losing her last hope. She did not complain. Perhaps she might endure if Simão stayed, but she felt her last bond to life break. She did not wish to add unjust remorse to his grief. She wished to see him happy, yet thought the poor condemned man incapable of happiness. Grief or the climate of exile would eventually kill him.
Life would have been beautiful, as in Simão's letters. Teresa saw the little house opposite Coimbra, surrounded by trees, flowers and birds. She imagined them beside the Mondego at dusk, beneath stars and moonlight on the water. She rested her face against his chest as against her mother's. The memory calmed her agony. In another letter, Simão had dreamt of glory and an immortal name. Teresa wanted to share those joys and ambitions. Even as a child, she had understood the desire for glory which he attributed to her love.
Teresa exclaimed, “Oh, Simão, what a beautiful heaven we have fallen from!” He was bound for the convict ship; she, for the grave. Without their three-year hope, Teresa could not live. Sleep had been a rare relief; death seemed a divine mercy. What would Simão do without his companion in suffering? Misfortune had crushed his heart, but not the image of that faithful woman. Would he love again without feeling ashamed before her memory? He would answer the questions when he read the letter on the open sea.
Morning was breaking, the last dawn of her eighteen years. She blessed him and asked God to spare him a long agony. She offered her anguish for his sins. She asked him to offer his suffering to God so that she might be forgiven. She said farewell; it seemed to her that she could already see him in eternity. Teresa had written while alive, expecting to be dead when Simão opened the letter.
Simão rose and stared at Mariana, who watched his slightest movement. Surprised, he asked why she did not go to sleep. Mariana had the captain's permission to stay. Simão asked her not to make that sacrifice. She asked to stay if she did not disturb him. Simão agreed and asked whether he could go up on deck. The captain rose from the berth and accompanied him.
Simão put away the letter, staggered up onto the deck and gazed at the dark Monchique lookout. The captain paced about, watching the convict's movements. Mariana had made him fear suicide, and he did not know how to console him. At times, he drew near to distract him from the lookout. Suddenly, Simão declared that he would not kill himself. He assured the captain that he would not end his own life. He agreed to go below, although he suffered more in the cabin. The captain remained on deck beneath the gusts. Mariana remained crouched among the cargo, a short distance from Simão.
At three, Simão held his burning forehead and fell against Mariana's breast. He called her an angel of compassion, but said that Teresa had suffered more. He asked Mariana, ‘Hold me up, my sister.’ He looked towards Monchique and went below gripping the ropes. He lay down and drank water without quenching his thirst. Fever, convulsions, retching and intervals of delirium followed.
In the morning, the captain summoned a doctor. The doctor merely called the illness 'malignant'. He warned that Simão might die before reaching India, without giving a more precise diagnosis. Mariana heard the prognosis without weeping. At eleven, the ship departed and seasickness worsened the illness. Simão took medicines, but vomited them at once.
On the second day of the voyage, Mariana asked what she should do with the letters kept in the chest if her brother died. The narrator marvels at the astonishing calmness of that question. Simão ordered her, if he died at sea, to throw all his papers into the water. The order also included the letters beneath his pillow. After a bout of illness cut off his voice, he asked Mariana what she intended to do if he died. Mariana simply replied that she would die. Simão then lamented how many people he had made unhappy.
The fever was increasing, and the captain recognised the signs of death from his experience of seeing so many convicts die at sea without sufficient medicine. On the fourth day, as the ship moved slowly off Cascais, a sudden storm arose. The ship was driven many miles out to sea and headed south without its bearings after losing the course for Lisbon. On the sixth day of uncertain sailing, amid thick fog, the rudder broke off Gibraltar. After the disaster, the wind eased and the waves grew calm. The following dawn brought a beautiful spring day. It was 27 March, the ninth day of Simão Botelho's illness.
Mariana seemed to have aged during those days. The captain told her that she looked as though she were returning from India after already enduring ten years of hardship. Mariana replied, ‘My hardships are certainly over now.’
At dusk that day, the convict became delirious for the last time. He repeated the image of the house opposite Coimbra, surrounded by trees, flowers and birds. He spoke of walking with Teresa beside the Mondego, of the starry sky and the moon lighting the water. Among broken phrases, he repeated that they had fallen from such a beautiful heaven and that his poor friend had died. He also echoed Teresa's question about life without his companion in suffering. He murmured words about the last dawn of Teresa's eighteen years and her request that he offer his sufferings to God so that she might be forgiven. At last, he spoke Mariana's name.
Mariana put her ear close to the dying man's purple lips. Simão told her that she would join them and that he and Teresa would be her brother and sister in heaven. He called her the purest angel and, still held by delirium, again addressed her as his sister. The passage from delirium into complete lethargy announced that death was near. At daybreak, the lamp went out and Mariana left to ask for a light. Hearing a groan, she returned in the darkness with her arms outstretched to find the dying man's face. Simão's spasming hand tightened around hers; then, suddenly, his fingers lost their strength.
The captain entered with a lamp and held its glass by Simão's mouth, but no mist formed on it. The captain confirmed that Simão was dead. Only then did Mariana bend over the body and kiss his face for the first time. She then knelt beside the cabin with her hands raised, neither praying nor weeping.
A few hours later, the captain told Mariana that it was time to bury their friend. He asked her to move to another cabin while they carried the dead man out. Mariana took the letters from beneath the pillow and fetched Simão's remaining papers from the chest. She tied the bundle in the apron that still bore the tears shed on the day of her madness and fastened it around her waist. The body was wrapped in a sheet and carried to the deck, with Mariana following it.
A sailor brought a stone from the hold and tied it to the corpse's legs with a length of rope. The captain watched the scene with wet eyes, and the soldiers uncovered their heads in a spontaneous gesture of respect. Leaning against the side of the ship, Mariana watched the sailor's tugs as he secured the stone to the body. Two men raised the body above the rail and swung it so that they could cast it well clear. Before the body struck the water, Mariana deliberately threw herself into the sea and no one managed to stop her. At the captain's order, they quickly lowered the boat and several men jumped in to try to save her. Yet Mariana moved her arms not to resist death, but only to embrace Simão's body when a wave cast it into her arms.
The captain looked towards the place where she had jumped and saw the apron caught in the rigging. A bundle of papers floated on the surface, and the sailors recovered it in the boat. They were the letters exchanged by Teresa and Simão. The narrator adds that Dona Rita Emília da Veiga Castelo Branco, Simão's favourite sister, was still living in Vila Real de Trás-os-Montes. The last member of the family to die, twenty-six years earlier, had been Manoel Botelho, the author's father. The End.