Wild Life in the Land of the Giants Part 47

"I can do no more, brother. I am sinking."

I feel glad--glad of the excuse to sink down among the snow and rest a little. Only a little. We creep close together, with our backs to the storm, pulling up our mantles round our heads and drawing in our legs for warmth. Oh, those good guanaco mantles, what a blessing they are now!

I keep talking to Jill and he to me, though we each have to shout into the other's ear.

I remember calling--

"Jill, we must not sleep. Are you drowsy?"

"No, not very."

"To sleep were death."

After a few moments, in an agony of desperation, thinking and fearing more for my brother than myself, I spring up, and again we try to wrestle on. The dogs keep close to our heels, though we hardly can see them, so covered are they with snow and ice.

In vain, in vain. We can go no farther, and once more take shelter beneath our robes of skin. Ossian and Bruce creep partly between us.

We talk no more now, but determinedly try to keep awake.

A whole hour must have pa.s.sed in this way. I am not on the plain now, it seems to me. I am wandering with my brother over the moorland at home, where when boys we met the convict. But the moor is strangely changed; it is all a-glimmer with radiant light. Every bush, branch, twig, and twiglet seem formed of coloured light or flame; the scene is gorgeous, enchanting.

Suddenly, all is dark. My brother is wrenched away from my grasp, and-- I awake shrieking. I awake to find myself lying on the log-house floor on a couch of guanaco skins.

My brother is safe, and even the dogs.

In an hour's time we are both well enough to get up and refresh ourselves with a cup of Pedro's _yerba mate_.

But our escape had been little short of miraculous. We had wandered a long distance out of the track, for the wind had gone round, and were entirely buried when found, only faithful Ossian and Bruce's voices had been heard high above the roaring storm.

We owed our lives to them.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

THE FIGHT 'TWIXT WINTER AND SPRING--A NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN EVENING-- ATTACKED BY NORTHERN INDIANS--THE FIRE.

Would Springtime never come again?

We had expected it weeks ago. The birds and beasts in the forest had expected it too. The former had commenced to sing, the latter had grown unusually active; guanacos had been in search of tender herbage, pumas had been in search of the guanacos. Hungry, lank, dismal-eyed foxes had come down to stare at the toldos when the dogs were eating; and even the armadillos had unrolled themselves from cosy caves and corners, and crawled at night towards the encampment.

Then the new snowstorm had come on all so suddenly too.

The denizens of the woods had taken shelter under the trees; in some of these the branches, snow-laden, had dropped groundward, forming quite a series of tents in the forest. In these the Indians had found whole colonies of great gawky-looking ostriches, and had made a harvest in feathers.

Lawlor, wading through the snow one day, and peeping in under the trees, came face to face with a puma. It would have gone hard with him had not Ritchie, rifle in hand, been close alongside and shot the huge beast while it was in the very act of springing.

But the dreary season came to an end at last, and the snow began to melt and to fly away. Then winter and spring seemed to fight together for the mastery. Winter riding on the wings of a fierce west wind that roared harshly through the woods and bent the trees before it. Winter driving before him battalions of threatening clouds, white, grey, and black, and trying to blot out the sun. Frost, with his crystal cohorts, struggling for every inch of ground, fighting for the lake of the plains, which had succ.u.mbed to the last terrible storm and was hardened over; fighting for the streams, the rapids, the cataracts.

The sun, in all his beauty and splendour, shooting out every now and then into the rifts of blue, and sending his darts groundwards at every unprotected spot, each ray a ray of hope for the long-enslaved earth.

Sunshine glittering on the leaves of evergreen shrubs, shining on the needles of pines, and adorning every budding twig with radiant dew-drops, that erst were crystals of ice.

Spring victorious on the higher grounds, and sending down torrents and floods to a.s.sist its triumph in the lowlands and plains.

Winter at last vanquished and gone, and forced to fly even from under the trees and every shady nook.

Now comes a warm soft breeze from the north and the east, and all the land responds to it. Torrents still pour from the hills, but the woods grow green in little over a week, and wild flowers carpet every knoll and bank.

We are all active now in the _estancia_ and in the camp. We are preparing for the long march back over the Pampa to Santa Cruz, where Castizo says he doubts not his little yacht is already lying safely at anchor, and his daughter anxiously waiting his appearance.

Horses are now better fed and tended, and regularly exercised day after day. Saddles are repaired, and stirrups and bridles seen to. The women are busier than ever with their needles. Boys and girls are twining sinews for the strings of bolas and for la.s.soes. The dogs seem wild with delight. They all appear to know we will soon be on the march once more, and they dearly love their life on the plains.

Our stores are nearly exhausted--I mean our coffee, tea, _mate_ and sugar. Flesh is still abundant, and always is. So no one will be sorry to leave this lovely forest nook, albeit we have spent many a happy day in it.

"In three days more," said Castizo one evening, as we all sat round the blazing logs, "we will be ready to start."

"I feel a little sorry in leaving this place," said Jill.

"There is nothing but leave-takings in this world," said Castizo; "and the happier one is the quicker the time flies, and the sooner seems to come this leave-taking."

"Never mind," said Peter; "if our good cacique would only say he would take me, I should be right glad to return with him another day."

"You will come back, I dare say, sir?" said Ritchie.

"If spared, yes. I may not spend another winter here though, for the simple reason that I will not have such pleasant company. I am fond of loneliness, still I shall ever look back to this winter as to some of the happiest months ever I spent in all my chequered career."

"So shall we all," I made bold to say.

"Hear, hear," said Peter and Jill.

"You've been happy, Pedro?"

"Ah! senor, multo, multo."

"Peter, your pipe."

"Is that a command," said Peter.

"Certainly. Am I not still your cacique?"

Peter got his pipe and commenced to play, and presently, after a gentle knock at the door, in came the giant Jeeka and his wife Nadi. They stood at some little distance till invited to draw nearer the fire.

Then they squatted on a guanaco skin, Jeeka holding his wife's hand in his lap, and both looking so pleased and happy.

I shall never forget their faces. I have but to place my hand over my eyes at this moment, and I see them once again.

Alas! little did they know what was before them. And little did any one there expect what happened before the sun of another day crimsoned the peaks of the lofty mountains.

Peter, Jill, and I sat long that night in our little room before turning in, talking of home. But Peter had something else to speak about. Need it be said that Dulzura--as he still delighted to call her--formed his chief subject for discourse to-night.