Around Areal the column was passed by an aircraft, briefly triggering panic and sending men and vehicles off the road. It was a recon plane personally flown by the legalist commander of Santa Cruz air base (the communist sympathizer was his commander in the Air Region), unarmed and without orders from above. In the morning another plane had dropped leaflets.

I haven't reconciled the timetables from all sources but several give 16:40-50 as the time of retreat. Muricy (a source in the form only of interviews) mentions times between emissaries and that he waited over an hour, not two, to advance, which other accounts repeat. He further mentions that after he won he gathered his officers, mentioned the situation and gave them the time to advance. One of my strongest sources ties 17:00 to the advance on Areal and 18:30 to the later split before Petrópolis. 16:50 and 17:00 are certainly tied but it can't have been a 10-minute delay (which a mention beneath a photograph in the next day's news suggests, speaking of a five-minute delay), particularly because of this briefing with the officers. Or the 10~ minutes were for entering Areal but the rebels stopped there until the 1+ hour mark.

In any case Cunha Melo retreated haphazardly. On their way the rebels found the 2nd Infantry in Pedro do Rio (also noteworthy, Col Raimundo was a trusted man of his divisional commander) whose commander declared himself loyal to the Minister of War but now this was void and he handed his forces. The same happened for the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Infantry in Itaipava. The Tiradentes Detachment had snowballed to 4-5 thousand men.