Wild Life in the Land of the Giants: A Tale of Two Brothers
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 succumbed 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 assist 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 lassoes. 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, maté 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! señor, 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.
“Oh,” he said, “I only wonder you fellows did not hear my heart going pit-a-pat, when Castizo told us his daughter was coming round in the yacht.”
“My dear Peter,” Jill said, “I do believe you are actually in love.”
“Is it the first time you’ve discovered it, my honest Greenie? Haven’t I cause to be? Was there ever such a lovely or fascinating creature in the world as Dulzura! And I’m a man now, remember. Twenty-one, boys, or I will be in a month.”
He stroked an incipient moustache as he spoke, and appeared savage because Jill and I laughed at him.
“Suppose Dulzura is already engaged?” said Jill, somewhat provokingly.
“Jill, you’re a Job’s comforter,” replied Peter. “Of course, if she is engaged, there’s an end to the matter. I’d enter a convent and turn a father.”
“A pretty father you’d make,” cried Jill, laughing again.
“All right,” said Peter, “Wait till you’re in love, Greenie, and won’t I serve you out just!”
“Well, boys,” I put in, “a happy thought has just occurred to me.”
“Let’s have it.”
“Suppose we cease talking and all go to bed.”
“Right,” cried Peter, jumping up and beginning to undress.
In a few minutes more “good-nights” were said, and we were composing ourselves to sleep. Sleep in this region is deep and heavy, and I may surely add healthy, for one awakens in the morning feeling as fresh as the daisies or the proverbial lark.
I did not seem to have been asleep a quarter of an hour when Peter shook me by the shoulder.
“Jack, Jack,” he was saying, “there is something up.”
Peter was already dressed, and accustomed as I had been to scenes of danger I was soon following his example, though hardly knowing where I was or what I was doing.
“Don’t you hear?” said Peter.
I listened now. In a moment I was as wide awake as ever I have been in my life.
I remember everything that happened that morning as though ’twere but yesterday. It was morning too. Our windows faced the east, and there was a faint glimmering of the dawn already in the sky.
From the direction of the Indian camp, came first a subdued hum of angry voices. These were soon mingled with shouts of men and screams of women and children, and presently there were added the clash of weapons and the ring of revolver shots.
“They are fighting down at the toldos,” said Peter. “Hurry up with your dressing.”
“Whom are they fighting with?”
“I cannot say. It may be mutiny. Either that, or the Northern Indians are on us.”
“Heaven forbid.”
“Here, Greenie!” cried Peter.
“Jill, Jill!” I shouted, “Get up, brother. They are fighting.”
Jill sat up and listened for a moment, then threw himself doggedly back again on his pillow.
“Jill!” I roared, shaking him viciously, “get up, you silly sleepy boy. The Indians are on us.”
Jill appeared fairly roused now. He sprang up and began to hurry on his dress.
We, that is Peter and I, got our revolvers and stuck them in our belts – they were always kept loaded; then we took our swords and sallied out.
“Follow quick, Jill,” were my last words to my brother. “Look out for me and get to my side. We may have to do a bit more back to back work.”
We saw at a glance that it was Northern Indians with whom we had to deal, and quite a large party.
The fight was raging fiercely. Peter and I overtook Ritchie and Lawlor hurrying into the fray, and joined them. Castizo was already there. We could hear his stern words of command, and we noticed too that his revolver emptied many a saddle. Our people were fighting on foot, but fighting well and bravely. The women and children had already fled to the forest.
We came up at the right time, evidently, and the volleys we poured in created the greatest confusion in the ranks of the enemy. They seemed staggered for a little while, and made as if to retreat, but were rallied and came on once more to the charge.
How long we fought I could not say; it might have been ten minutes, or it might have been half an hour.
Suddenly there was a momentary lull, and I looked about me for Jill. He was nowhere to be seen. I shouted to Peter. He had not seen him. I extricated myself from the mêlée as best I could, and hurried back to the log-house. The poor foolish fellow must have gone to sleep again. As it happened, this is precisely what he had done. But, to my horror, I found the log-house surrounded by smoke. It was on fire.
And my brother was there, in its midst.
How I reached the door I never knew. At first I seemed dazed, nor am I certain that at any period of that dreadful night I regained the equilibrium of my senses.
I rushed in through smoke and flames. I could just distinguish my brother’s form lying half-dressed on his couch, but was speedily obliged to retreat.
Then I remember feeling angry with the fire, mad almost. Why should the flames take my brother from me, the being I loved as my own soul? No, no! Save him I must, save him I should! I looked upon the fire as a living thing, as a cruel, remorseless, merciless wild beast. I fought the fire. I defied it. I was calm, though; that is, I was calm as regards the rational sequence of my actions, but in reality I was a maniac for the time being. Do men, I wonder, who do marvellous deeds of daring in the field or lead forlorn hopes, feel and fight as I then did?
With a strength that did not appear to be my own, I tore down the blazing door-posts and door that barred my entrance. Then once more I was in the room. Groping around now, stumbling too, for I could see nothing in the smoke. Ah! here at last I have him; I have him at last now!
Out now I struggle and stagger, and fall choking in the morning air.
Chapter Thirty
“It is better thus.”
Yes, Jill was saved. He soon revived, and was able to follow me down to the toldos.
My hands were badly burned, but I did not feel pain then. Such a gush of happiness had come over my heart when Jill spoke to me again, that I forgot everything else.
Daylight had by this time spread itself right athwart the sky; and I remember the morning was beautiful with one crimson feathery cloud over the eastern horizon, where the sun was soon to show.
By the time we reached the Indian camp, the battle was over and won. The survivors of the Northern Indians had been beaten back to the woods from which they had sallied, and there was but little fear that they would come again. Too many of their saddles had been emptied to encourage a renewal of the warfare.
It was a sad scene. The tents torn and flapping in the morning breeze, some of them down; broken spears and guns and daggers lying here and there; dead and dying horses; dead and dying men, the anguish of the women, the wailing of the children.
I took all this in at a glance. Then my eyes were riveted on a group at some little distance, and I hastened thither, to find Castizo kneeling beside the tall noble form of the prostrate Prince Jeeka.
He holds out his right hand as I approach; Castizo gives place to me, and I kneel where he had knelt. At his other side crouches Nadi. She is bewildered and silent, grief and anguish depicted in every line of her poor drawn, pinched face.
“Jeeka, Jeeka, are you much hurt? Who has done this?”
“Hurt? Yes. Ya shank, ya shank.” (I am tired and sleepy). “So, so.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. I thought he was gone, but he slowly opened them again, and looked at me.
“Poor Nadi!” he said. “It – was – her brother. So, so.”
This, then, was the key to the awful night’s work. Revenge. Verily these Patagonian Indians are men of like passions with ourselves.
“The Great Good Spirit is come. Jeeka goes – home. Tell me – the story of the – world. So, so.”
These were the last words poor Prince Jeeka ever spoke on earth. He had gone to learn the story of the world, in a better world than ours.
We all came away and left Nadi with her dear husband. Her face had fallen forward on his big broad chest, and she appeared convulsed with grief.
“Leave her a little,” Castizo said. “It is ever better thus.”
In about half an hour, or it might have been less, Peter and I returned.
Nadi had never moved from her position.
“Nadi, my poor woman,” said Peter. “Nadi, Nadi.”
She was still.
Peter touched her shoulder, then turned quickly round to me.
“She does not need our consolation, Jack,” he said, solemnly.
“What,” I cried, “is Nadi dead?”
“Nadi is dead!”
If I have any consolation at all in looking back to the events of that morning, it is to think that Jill and I had told to these poor heathens the sad, sweet story of this world.
Jeeka and his wife are buried side by side on the banks of the river that rolls through the forest, close to the spot where our old log-house stood.
“Amidst the forests of the West,By a dark stream they’re laid;The Indian knows their place of restFar in the cedar shade.”Chapter Thirty One
On the Good Yacht “Magdalena” – “The very Seas used to sing to us” – The Home-Coming – The End
At sea once more.
At sea in one of the smartest yachts that ever walked the waters like a thing of life.
At sea, and homeward bound. Ah! that was what sent the joyful flush to our cheeks and the glad glitter to our eyes, whenever we chose to think of the fact, and try to realise it.
The Magdalena in which we were sailing was no racer, but a splendid sea craft, and one that, as Ritchie said, could have shown a pair of clean heels to the best tea-ship in the merchant service. And that was saying a deal. She was broad in the beam for a yacht, but consequently safe and comfortable. Her masts were tall, but they were also strong, and she carried such a cloud of canvas that, seen from a distance, she must have looked a perfect albatross.
To say that her decks were as white as snow would be to talk figuratively, but literally they were as white as cocoanut husk and holystone could make them. The sails were really like snow in the sunshine, and there was not a bit of polished wood about her decks, whether in binnacle or capstan, that did not look as if varnished; nor a morsel of brass or copper that did not shine.
There was an awning over the quarter-deck by day, for we were in the tropics, and the sun blazed down with a heat sufficient to soften the pitch, if it did not absolutely make it boil.
Yonder, under the awning, sits Castizo, in a light coat and straw hat, quietly reading a book. Jill and I are walking rapidly up and down the deck, and Dulzura is standing beside Peter. Both are gazing down at the bubbling green water, that goes eddying along the good ship’s sides. Yet I do not think that either Dulzura or he is thinking very much about it.
But why, it may be reasonably asked, are we homeward bound, instead of bearing up for Castizo’s place at Valparaiso? Ah! thereby hangs a tale. And I will endeavour to tell it as it was told to us, on the very last night we spent on the Pampa.
We were barely one day’s journey from the port of Santa Cruz, and were bivouacked in a green cañon under the lee of the west barranca. Not far off were the toldos of our faithful Indians. Alas! we sadly missed Jeeka and poor Nadi, though. Not far off, the horses quietly grazed by the water’s edge.
We sat beside the fire of roots on our guanaco skins for the night was not warm.
There had been silence for a brief space. We were waiting for our maté. Presently it came in steaming bowls.
“Ah! thank you, Pedro. What should we do without you?” said Castizo.
“What, indeed?” “What, indeed?” said Jill and I.
“How anxious your daughter will be,” said Peter. “She has had quite a long time to wait for us.”
Castizo smiled.
“My daughter,” he replied, “will not be idle. She will have gone cruising. She is like me and like her poor mother – she hates inactivity.”
“You have only once before mentioned Miss Castizo’s mother in our hearing,” said Peter.
“True, Peter. But now that we are so soon to part – for you will meet a steamer at Puentas Arenas to take you back to your own country, and we may never meet again – I may as well give you a very brief outline of my life.”
We are all silent, and presently Castizo continued:
“It must be brief indeed; I am but a poor storyteller. Besides, I have but little to tell, and there is a tinge of sorrow over it all.
“I was born of a noble Spanish family, and found myself fatherless and wealthy at a very early age. I was always fond of wild sport and of a nomadic life, and before I had reached the age of twenty-five had visited most parts of the world in my own yacht, and been a soldier to boot. At a ball one night in Madrid I fell deeply in love with a beautiful young lady. She was quite of my own way of thinking as regards a wandering life. I will not dwell upon the happiness of my married life. Suffice it to say that Magdalena became the one bright star in my mental firmament. I do not think any one could have loved each other more than we did. Zenona, whom you, Peter, call Dulzura, was the first pledge of that love. About two years after her birth I accepted a post of great honour in Monte Video, and thither we went to settle down. We even sold our yacht, so content were we with the climate. Then Silvana was born.
“It was about a year after this that I noticed a marked change in my poor wife. She began to look ill. I wish now I had thrown up my post of honour. What did I need with honour, when I had riches and the whole love of such a wife as Magdalena?
“She must have a change. She must go home. I would follow in the course of a year. Ah! my dear friends, it is here the sorrow comes in. She entreated me, she begged of me in tears and anguish, not to ask her to leave me.
“No, no, no. I was obdurate. Oh, I must have been hard-hearted – mad, even.
“She went away. She sailed in a ship bound for France, a Spanish barque.”
Castizo paused, and I could see the tears in his eyes by the light of the fire.
“And the ship was wrecked?” said Peter.
I had never seen Peter look so strange before; he appeared almost wild.
“The ship,” said Castizo, slowly, almost solemnly, “must have foundered at sea, for I never saw nor heard of her more, nor of my poor dear wife and baby. That is my story: that is the key to the seeming mystery of my restlessness, and of my love for being alone at times. That is all.”
“No,” cried Peter, half rising from the recumbent position he had resumed when Castizo began to speak. “No, my friend Castizo; that is not all. That is not all, Jack. Is it?”
“I think not,” I said, and I was almost as excited now as Peter, while Jill, too, sat up with his eyes fixed on Castizo’s face, on which was a look of mingled curiosity and amazement.
“I will finish the story,” continued Peter, speaking as slowly as he could. “I knew your daughter Zenona the moment I first saw her at Puentas Arenas. I knew her eyes, her strangely beautiful face; I knew her hair, her wondrous hair. We have her counterpart at home, in the old house by the sea, where dwell Jack’s mother and aunt. You have heard them,” – he pointed to Jill and me – “you have heard them speak of their sister Mattie. Mattie is that counterpart.”
“I do not understand,” said Castizo.
“Nay, but listen, and you shall. The ship in which your poor wife and child were sent home, did not founder at sea. She was wrecked on the coast of Cornwall, and went in pieces next day. Not a timber of her was saved, her very name would have been unknown but that two sailors out of all the crew were saved, and your wife and child.”
“My wife and child! Say those words again!”
“Do not let me raise hopes, my friend, that must end in disappointment. The lady died.”
Castizo fell back with a moan, but sat up once more as Peter went on talking.
“But the child lived; is living now – at least so we must hope, for we left her well. She is their adopted sister Mattie.”
“This is indeed a strange ending to my story. What name did the ship so cast away sail by.”
Peter was silent.
“Neither Jill nor I remember,” I replied. “We are not quite sure we ever heard it. One of the shipwrecked sailors was killed. The other, whose name is Adriano, I have lost sight of for many a long year.”
Castizo’s face fell.
“There was no such man on board the Zenobia. I knew every man in the barque. Ha, Peter, my dear boy, I fear it was someone else’s ship, someone else’s wife and child. Can you give me the date?”
“Alas!” I said, “I cannot even do that for certain. It was a fisherman’s boat that saved those who were saved. It was the fisherman’s wife who kept the child, till by accident she became our sister. There is no other clue.”
“Was there not a large chest,” said Peter.
“Yes,” I said. Then I described the box most minutely to Castizo. It was such a strange box, taller than it was broad, the length and width the same, and painted blue.
It was Castizo’s turn now to show anxiety and excitement. He made me describe the box over and over again. I even took a pencil and sketched it from memory on a fly-leaf of the Bible dear mother had given me when a boy.
Then Castizo said, “That was my poor Magdalena’s box. Thank God, our child lives.”
He put but one more question to me.
“Was there nothing of value in the chest? Were there no papers, money, or rings or watches?”
“Nothing save clothes. I’ve often and often heard Mummy Gray, as Mattie calls her, wonder at that.”
“Then I’m more than ever convinced the chest was hers. It had a false bottom. The box was specially prepared for the voyage. Oh, boys, Heaven, in sending you to Puentas Arenas, condescended to answer my prayers. Now, instead of returning to Valparaiso, my yacht shall take you back to England.”
That, then, was what occurred on our last night on the Pampa; and the story begun by Castizo, and so opportunely finished by Peter with a little assistance from Jill and me, was the cause of our being here altogether, homeward bound in the good sea yacht Magdalena.
That was indeed an idyllic voyage. Even to Jill and me it was idyllic, ten times more so must it have been to Peter and Dulzura.
With the exception of a week in the doldrums while crossing the line, we had glorious weather all the way, with just the breezes a sailor loves, enough to fill the sails and carry us merrily onwards.
The very seas used to sing to us as they went seething past and away astern; and on sighting the dear chalky cliffs of England, the gulls that came out in flocks to meet us seemed to shriek us a welcome, and tell us all was well.
Perhaps we ought to have come farther up the Channel than we did, and sailed right into the great naval seaport, where dear father used to be stationed.
But no. We would do nothing of the sort, but – the weather being fine and only a gentle breeze now blowing – go right into the little bay, and anchor before our own door.
And so we did.
Yonder it was, dear old-fashioned Trafalgar Cottage. We all looked at it through the glass. Nothing altered, nothing. Balcony, garden, railings, and climbers all the same.
But there were no signs of life about, though smoke came from the chimney.
Oh dear, how a sailor’s heart does beat with anxiety when he reaches once more his native land; and how he does keep worrying and wondering whether his relations and friends are alive and well!
We are in the bay now, and the anchor is let go. What a delicious sound is that of the chain running out! No music in the world is half so sweet.
