The Quiteño now jumped a second time; the Indians started distrustfully, but did not threaten him with their spears, and the two white men followed him, their hands prudently on their hidden revolvers. The savages chattered excitedly, but still made no offensive motion.
“Ask them about the cotton, Diego,” said the Argentino. “Tall yellow flowers, with purple spots, tell them.”
“Yellow? What? Flowers? We eat them,” was the lucid reply which Diego obtained.
The truth was, the poor wretches were so degraded and helpless, that apart from obeying such elementary instincts as eating and killing, they knew nothing, thought nothing, understood nothing. They ate anything that they could chew or swallow: flowers, roots, slugs, beetles, and such fish, birds, or reptiles as they had the wit to kill; perhaps they filled their stomachs with mud upon occasion, as many savages are said to do; perhaps they actually were cannibals, and, like some of the Fuegians, ate their dead relatives instead of burying them. Altogether it was a sad spectacle; sadder still if one reflects that they may possibly have had in their veins the blood of a once powerful people.
As the strangers advanced, the Indians drew off, walking backwards and at a similar pace to theirs. The bank gave on to a shrub-dotted plain, covered with flowers of all colours, and, in patches, with giant thistles. Snipe started up from the ground at 336 the sound of the voices; in the distance were a few ostriches and wild cattle; but as the only weapon which the natives seemed to possess was this kind of club with a fish-bone point bound to it with a strip of fish-skin, it is probable that neither birds nor beasts suffered much at their hands.
This visit was not thrown away, for Hutchinson soon found enough wild cotton to encourage the hope that there was more in the neighbourhood. Meanwhile, Ruberta asked how the savages caught their fish. It turned out that they had even forgotten how to make lines, let alone hooks; they had no boats, and were dependent on spearing such fish as came under the banks from time to time. Where the poor souls lived was a mystery; not a habitation of any sort was visible. Only once more did they show anger or animation. Diego was questioning them, when all of a sudden they stopped and extended their spears, as if to bar the intruders’ passage; and, for a moment, their wooden expression gave place to something like ferocity and rage.
“What have you been saying to them?” asked Hutchinson anxiously.
“I merely asked what they had done with their women and children.”
The question was indiscreet, as the explorer could have told him; but their mode of answering it was interesting, as showing that the poor fellows had some little sense of proprietorship, if not of the duty of protecting those who should be dependent on them. Most likely they had sent the women and children away, on finding that strangers were in the neighbourhood—a 337 sign of suspicion, if not of meditated war, common among all Indians from the Eskimos to the Fuegians.
“They needn’t think we’re likely to want to marry into their tribe,” said Ruberta. “I think we have seen about enough of them now. Let’s get rid of them.” He drew his revolver and fired into a flock of wild duck that were making for the water. A startled scream rose from all the Indians; they turned and fled for perhaps fifty yards; then stopped and looked back; but just then the three Zambos who were loitering on the bank began running towards their employer, thinking the report was a danger signal; and this completed the panic of the savages, who fled over the nearest hill and were seen no more.