“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 bass 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 passed 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 God.
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 tit-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 pass 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.