"December 12.—Only a sportsman can realise my feelings. At one fell swoop both my guns, my old friends, gone! The more serious loss of the two is the Mauser. It has accompanied me upon my travels 10,000 miles, and was always to be relied on. And now to fancy it probably glimmering up through the deep waters of Buenos Aires Lake! Is there any use in saying more? When we get back to camp I shall have to fall back on the reserve Mauser, which has no back-sight, or I should say has a back-sight fastened on with a strip of raw hide. You arrange it before the shot, and when you have it balanced you loose off, and if the gun does not misfire you may hit something. How different to the rifle that is gone! And the shot-gun, which has also departed with the Mauser, was a gun with a history. Given to my uncle for gallant services in another part of the world—a Purdey double-hammerless 12-bore, I regarded it as an heirloom. Why did I ever bring it to Patagonia? Many a time have I, out of the shooting season, cuddled the stock and shot imaginary birds, and dreamed of the phalanx of geese bearing down on me in Scotland in the coming October! It is all over. His glittering locks "clutch the sand," or in fragments he shifts with the waters of the inhospitable torrent. Oh, my guns! my guns! Well, it was a congenial death to you, and I am glad to think the Mauser had killed a couple of Patagonian huemules before he came to his end. But, sentiment apart—and there is a great deal of it in this affair—the loss is very serious. True I have still at Horsham Camp four rifles and a shot-gun (two Colts, a Paradox, a 12-bore and the sick Mauser), but none of them are in the same class with the lost ones."
Before leaving the camp I went down again to the river brink to seek for wreckage. Nothing was to be seen save rock and stone, overturned trees and boulders. My regrets for the losses which had befallen us were, however, moderated by the reflection that I might well be thankful I was not personally keeping the two guns cold company in the bottom of the lake.
We were astir at four o'clock by moonlight, and started three-quarters of an hour later. To us, knocked about and dog-tired as we were, the going was difficult. The barrancas seemed endless. The river was now a yellow flood, crashing and rushing down the cañadon, bearing trees, bushes, and logs with its whirl and flurry. When we arrived at the upper ford it was only to find six feet of water there and a fall formed beyond it—quite impassable in fact.
Our position, in the face of this difficulty, was rather a serious one. We had food for three days, that is, porridge, and though "parritch is gran' food," it is not, alone, good to work very hard on. The snows were still melting in the hills, and, given a protracted period of warm weather, it might be days before the river would allow of our passing through it. I lit a signal-fire on the hills in the hope that my party at Horsham Camp would reply.
Huemul (Xenelaphus bisulcus) in Summer Coat
It was possible that our small Argentine friend had again been lost "running ostriches" and had again lit up half the countryside to call his companions' attention to that important fact. The only weapon left us was a broken Colt and the cartridges in it. But apart from our own position was the far more serious fact that our companions were signalling to us to "Come at once—something wrong."
All the day through we patrolled the river banks, riding up and down searching for a ford. About six in the evening we found a place where an island broke the force of the torrent, and we fancied the water was falling.
The river everywhere was shut in by high cliffs. At the foot of the cliff we descended the ground was so soft that the horses sank, and we had to haul them through. When we came down to the level of the river, it appeared very different, viewed close at hand, to the encouraging idea we had formed, even through the telescope, from the cliffs above. But the set of the current was for once towards the farther bank, where it culminated in rapids.