I was amused, too, at the way he spoke to Jill.
"I"m awfully obliged to you, Greenie," he said, "for dancing so much with my Dulzura. It was kind and considerate. I knew _you_ wouldn"t make love and talk nonsense to her as some of the officers tried to do."
"Oh no," said Jill, with his quiet smile, "we talked nothing but politics, I a.s.sure you, and discussed the future prospects of the South Sea Islanders."
"Do you like her, Greenie?"
"a.s.suredly."
"Love, of course, is out of the question?"
"Certainly."
"Well, you"ll be glad to know that she and I get on famously together.
The worst of it is that she can"t talk much English, and I don"t know much Spanish. But she is going to teach me. About a fortnight will make me perfect."
"About a fortnight, Peter," I said in some surprise. "Why the boat for Monte Video comes round the day after to-morrow."
"Ah! yes, but I"m not going in her. Neither are you nor Greenie here.
That"s what I came to speak about."
"Well, heave round. I"ll be glad to hear what you have to say."
"It"s very simple. Senor Castizo has taken an inordinate fancy for me.
Dear Dulzura goes home with her maid to Valparaiso in about three weeks time, but her father stops. He is going into the wilds of Patagonia, where he has been before, and knows the lay of the land well. And he asked me to stay too, and accompany him."
"Yes, and what did you say?"
"I said I"d do so like a shot, if I got you and Greenie to come with us."
Jill"s eyes sparkled with delight.
"It would be simply glorious," he said. "And I"m sure mother wouldn"t mind, nor aunt either."
"But we haven"t much money to rig up," I said.
"Oh, we"ve enough, I a.s.sure you. It"s a cheap country to live in.
Castizo says about all a man wants is a guanaco robe and a gun, with a horse or two, and there you are."
I confess I was quite as struck with the notion of having a few wild adventures in the Land of the Giants as Jill was; but, being the elder, I was of course bound to prudence and discretion.
"We"d have to write a very long letter home," I said.
"Well, you"re capable of doing that, I believe."
"And state that there is little danger, and that it will recruit Jill"s health."
"Capital phrase!" cried Peter. "Jack, you"re quite a diplomatist."
"But," I added, "is there much danger?"
"Not very much, from the way Castizo speaks. I would bear very lightly on those if I were you."
"And you know, Jack," said Jill, "adventures would not be much worth without just a _soupcon_ of danger."
"True. Well, I must confess I"m willing. What about Ritchie?"
"He and another man are coming with us."
"And Captain Coates and our dear little mother?"
"Going home. They must, you know. We needn"t. And it isn"t French leave either. You and I and Jill are shipwrecked mariners--that, by the way, is why we are objects of interest and romance to Dulzura. We"re shipwrecked mariners, and it isn"t as if we were apprentices."
"We are all pa.s.sed mates."
"And the _Salamander_ was aunt"s ship," added Jill. "She can get us another."
"True, Jill; you"re a brick."
"Well," he added, "is it a bargain?"
"Yes," I said, speaking for Jill and myself too. Then we all shook hands, and the conversation took another turn; that is--it went back to Dulzura.
CHAPTER NINETEEN.
BOOK III--THE LAND OF GIANTS.
ALL ALONE ON THE PAMPAS--THE CAMP IN THE CANON.
Alone on the Pampas. Alone in the moonlight. Alone amidst scenery so black, so bare, so desolate, that looking back now through a long vista of years, as I sit by my cosy English fireside, I shudder to think of it.
There was nought of life to be seen anywhere, save that single horseman on his trusty steed who stopped for a moment on an upland ridge to gaze around him. Not a tree; hardly a bush; the very gra.s.s itself in stunted patches, with rough boulders lying here and there as if they had been rained from the heavens. No signs of house nor habitation, only the sharply undulating plain, wherever the eye might turn, and far away on the western horizon, hills or mountains snow-clad, glimmering white in the uncertain light of moon and stars.
The moon? Yes, and I have oftentimes thought, while on the Pampas, that if one could reach that orb, it would be just such a landscape as this he would see on every side; and if wind blows there at all, it would be just such a wind, as is now moaning and sighing over this dreary plain from the distant Cordilleras.
It was neither a wild nor a stormy night, however. Behind a huge bank of yellow clouds, that lay high over the mountains, the lightning was flickering and playing every moment; the breeze was not high nor was it extra cold, being early summer in this region. It is the desolation and the exceeding lonesomeness of the situation that strikes to the heart and feelings of one when he thinks of it.
And the deep silence!
Were there no sounds at all? Very few; only that moaning, sighing, whispering wind, rising at times into almost a shriek, then dying away again till it could scarce be heard. A wind in which, had you been at all nervous, you might have almost declared you heard voices, human or ghostly. Only the wind, and now and then the cry of some night-hawk or its victim; or the plaintive, peevish yap of the prairie fox.
Very marked indeed is the silence by night on the Patagonian Pampas.
Not more so anywhere except on the broad, glittering snow-fields of the Arctic "pack," or the highest plateaus of the Himalayan hills.
So tall and square is the figure of the horseman, whose rifle is slung across his shoulders, and so active, yet st.u.r.dy and strong, does his horse look, that standing there on the ridge, he has all the picturesqueness of a mounted Arab.
He shudders slightly now and draws his guanaco mantle closer about him, gazes once more around as if taking his bearings, then rides slowly on.