"Jill, you"re a dear, good fellow. You"ll take the baby, won"t you?
The mother has gone away forward somewhere. Do, old man. I"ll never call you Greenie again."
"I won"t have little copper-face."
"Well, then," said Peter, doggedly, "if it should sneeze again there"ll be manslaughter. That"s all."
But, greatly to our shipmate"s relief, back came Nadi, and once more secured her darling. Peter smiled now, but he gave a big sigh of relief that might have been heard all over the Pampas.
"You chaps," he said, "boast about your feats of horsemanship; but just let any of you try riding over the wide wild prairie with a baby in your arms. Well, I"ve done that, and don"t you forget it."
The storm grew worse instead of better; the snow fell thicker and faster every moment. And now something very strange occurred, for suddenly it became very dark. One would have thought night was falling. While we were all wondering what was about to happen, a blinding flash of lightning spread itself athwart the gloom, followed almost immediately after by a rattling peal of thunder. Flash succeeded flash, peal after peal of thunder, harsh, sharp, and deafening, reverberated from rock to rock. It was unlike any thunder I had ever heard before--not the deep ba.s.s roar that one listens to in a storm off the Cape, nor the crashing big-gun sound of thunder in the mountains. The noise was of a tearing, rending character, and resembled platoon or volley firing as near as anything I know of. But the effect of the lightning among the falling snow was most beautiful and wonderful. And whenever a more brilliant and dazzling flash than usual occurred, for a few seconds thereafter the flakes looked purple, blue, and crimson, and sometimes nearly black.
Our horses stood the storm well, for they are marvellously trained animals.
It got lighter now, and gradually the snow ceased to fall, and we could see the sky. Blue it was towards the eastern horizon, with one dark, unbroken canopy of clouds moving fast away overhead towards the Cordilleras.
Back rolled the great cloud-curtain, and presently out shone the glorious sun, and the scene around us was now beautiful but dazzling in the extreme.
We rode on through the Pampas all that day. Whenever we came to a lagoon--and we pa.s.sed many--we noticed that the water looked as black as ink. It is the same with the sea in the Arctic regions, the contrast in colour accounting for the optical illusion.
We saw many ducks on these lakes, as well as a species of wild geese; but Castizo did not think it advisable to delay our advance for the sake of sport, especially as our larder was full to repletion.
The sun was setting when we reached our camping ground, which was under the lee of a terrace of rocks and close to a pretty little lake. Tired though we all were, more particularly Peter, we could not help pausing to marvel at the extraordinary beauty of the snow-clad hills of the west. Their strange and fantastic summits, and even far down towards the base of the mountains, were lit up with a glory of colour which in no country of the world have I ever seen rivalled or equalled. The shadows or shades were sharply defined and of a bluish purple hue. The high lights were either of pure white or the most delicate shades of crimson. What a beautiful world this is, after all, if we could be but content with it! and every sort of weather, every sort of scenery, and every season, whether spring, summer, autumn or winter, has its own peculiar charm to one who is at home with Nature or Nature"s G.o.d.
Our men and the Indians now bustled about, and in less than half an hour the toldos were erected and the dinner nearly ready. Our dish to-night was to be a Patagonian stew, the meat consisting of the t.i.t-bits of the guanaco and ostrich, with a kind of tuberous root dug up by the Indians, and which is indeed a palatable adjunct to diet on the Pampas. Another dish was to be a mash of ostriches" eggs, which, well salted and peppered and mixed with a morsel of guanaco suet, is food fit for a hungry king.
But while dinner was cooking, and in order to pa.s.s the time, Ritchie, Jill, and I went down by the side of the lagoon to look for game, while Peter lay down in the toldo to rub himself.
We had half an hour"s splendid sport. Owing to the weather, perhaps, the birds did not care to fly, so we had to shoot them afloat Ossian would not take the water to retrieve, so Bruce had all the work to do, and very nimbly and energetically he did it too. There were with us several of the ordinary Pampas whippets, but they merely sat with their tails in the snow and looked on. It really seemed to us that Bruce was showing off a bit on his own account, for although he might have waded into the water, this did not suit him. It was not effective enough. He must give one warning bark first to attract the attention of the mongrels--the bark sounding almost like the word "look?"--then down he came with a feathering rush, sprang far into the water, swam up to his bird, caught it nimbly and brought it out.
We retired early, and slept very sound indeed, particularly Peter.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.
"OUR HORSES STAMPEDED"--"POOR BENIGHTED HEATHENS!"--JILL"S LITTLE JOKE-- TELLING JEEKA THE STORY OF THE WORLD--ADVENTURE IN THE HAUNTED WOOD.
When we looked out next morning we found, to our surprise, that the snow had all gone from the Pampas.
"Isn"t it strange?" I said to Castizo.
"No," he answered--"at least I should say "yes, it is strange," but then one must never marvel at anything that happens on the Pampas. If I"m any judge of the weather, however, well have summer now."
Travelling to-day was exceedingly difficult, the ground being so wet and sloppy. Peter only tumbled once. We came to a river, and had some trouble getting over it. There should be no river here, though on very rare occasions the rain from the mountains, and more particularly the melting snow, has been known to come down in an immense force and fill the canon from bank to bank.
As the weather soon grew fine once more, with the exception of now and then a drizzling rain or thick fog, which, however, did little more than damp the surface and lay the dust, Castizo, our worthy cacique, determined to take things easy.
We therefore set about enjoying ourselves as much as we could. Our report was at all times excellent. I could not help saying to Peter that a sportsman in this country who was not afraid of roughing it a little, might actually acc.u.mulate wealth.
"And b.u.mps," said Peter, solemnly. "My dear Jack," he added, "it"s the roughing it that is the great drawback. Now I can walk as well as anybody. Or if I ride and the nag goes at a nice swinging gallop, then I"m as jolly as if on the quarter-deck of an A1-er. But these beastly nags go hippity-skippity, skippity-nippity, till it"s perfectly sickening."
"Well, but Peter, old man, you ought to be getting quite hard by this time."
"No, Jack, it"s all the other way. Instead of the saddle hardening me, I"m hardening the saddle. There is where the grief comes in, and I"m afraid it is breaking down an otherwise splendid const.i.tution."
"Have an extra rug under you, then."
"A feather pillow would suit him best," said Jill, laughing.
"I"ll tell Mother Coates about you, Mr Greenie, soon"s we get home.
That is if there be anything left of me to get home."
"Well, Peter," continued Jill, "it is partly my fault, after all--your being so sore, I mean."
"How, Greenie?"
"Because I neglected to ask Mother Coates for the cold cream before the steamer left Sandy Point."
At this moment a herd of guanacos was sighted. There was a shout from the Indians, who at once spread out to surround them.
"Hurrah!" cried Peter. "Here"s for off. Hoop!"
And away went our erratic messmate, helter-skelter over the plains, quite forgetting the hardness of the saddle in that wild gallop.
Peter had become quite an adept at throwing either la.s.so or bolas. The only drawback here again being that after "heaving," as he called it, he was apt to follow them, and this resulted in more b.u.mps. It is really surprising to me that Peter never smashed his neck, or at the very least his collar-bones. When we congratulated him on his good luck in this respect, he replied--
"Why, how can I break bones? There isn"t a bone in my body, I tell you.
I"m all pulp."
Peter certainly had plenty of pluck.
I never saw Peter happier than one morning when awaking, we found that all our horses had stampeded. Perhaps stampeded is too strong a word.
It would be more correct to say they had silently disappeared. So we had to walk in search of them.
The trail was evident enough, and led us still farther to the west.
There was no mistake about it. Peter could walk if he could not ride.
He was constantly turning round to us and calling--
"Come on, you fellows. Haven"t you got any legs under you? Such old dawdlers I never did see!"
The Indians said that the Gualichu had lured the horses away--meaning the evil spirit whom they sometimes worship.
The Gualichu might have been an evil spirit, but if so he was a most handsome one, and shaped like a small-headed, fiery-eyed, arch-necked stallion, with marvellous mane and tail.
I was surprised to see Jeeka level his gun at the beautiful brute and fire. The stallion rolled down dead, and after that we had but little difficulty in bringing back our steeds.
We encamped that night by a very small stream, which meandered through a chaos of round stones and boulders. And here, for the first time since we set out, we succeeded in catching fish--a kind of grey mountain trout; they were of excellent flavour, but small in size.
We saw some commotion among the Indians this evening after dinner, and found they were muttering prayers or incantations, and making salaams to the new moon.