In a few seconds the fish are reached and secured, to the great grief and anger of the gulls, who, now screaming furiously, wheel round the heads of the swimmers until they are on shore again.
Worth all their trouble is the spoil retrieved, as the fish prove to be a species of mullet, each of them over six pounds in weight.
Now assured of having something to eat at the end of their journey, they set out in much better spirits. But they make not many steps—if steps they can be called—before discovering the difficulties at which the old sealer has hinted, saying, “ye’ll see.” Steps, indeed! Their progress is more a sprawl than a walk; a continuous climb and scramble over trunks of fallen trees, many so decayed as to give way under their weight, letting them down to their armpits in a mass of sodden stuff, as soft as mud, and equally bedaubing. Even if disposed, they could no longer laugh at the cook’s changed colour, all of them now showing much the same.
But no place could be less incentive to laughter than that which they are in. The humid atmosphere around them has a cold, clammy feel, and the light is no better than shadowy twilight. A weird, unearthly silence pervades it, only broken by the harsh twitter of a diminutive bird—a species of creeper—that keeps them company on the way, the dismal woo-woo-a of an owl, and, at intervals, the rattling call-note of the Fuegian woodpecker. The last, though laugh-like in itself, is anything but provocative of mirth in those who listen to it, knowing that it is a sound peculiar to the loneliest, gloomiest recesses of the forests.
After toiling up the steep acclivity for nearly two hours, they arrive at a point where the tall timber abruptly ends. There are trees beyond—beeches, like the others, but so dwarfed and stunted as to better deserve the name of bushes. Bushes of
low growth, but of ample spread; for in height, less than twenty inches, while their branches extend horizontally to more than that number of feet! They are as thickly branched as the box-edging of a garden walk, and so interwoven with several species of shrubs—arbutus, berberis, chamatis, donaria, and escalonia—as to present a smooth matted surface, seemingly that of the ground itself, under a close-cropped sward.
Mistaking it for this, the two young men, who are in the lead, glad at having escaped from the gloom of the forest with its many obstructions, gleefully strike out into what they believe to be open ground, only to find their belief a delusion, and the path as difficult as ever. For now it is over the tops of growing trees instead of the trunks of fallen ones, both alike impracticable. Every now and then their feet break through and become entangled, their trousers are torn and their shins scratched by the thorns of the berberries.
The others, following, fare a little better, from being forewarned, and proceeding with greater caution. But for all it is a troublesome march, calling for agility. Now a quick rush, as if over thin ice or a treacherous quagmire; anon, a trip-up and tumble, with a spell of floundering before feet can be recovered.
Fortunately, the belt of Lilliputian forest is of no great breadth, and beyond it, higher up, they come upon firmer ground, nearly bare of vegetation, which continues to the summit of the ridge.