Working backwards to the date of Pedro’s disappearance from Buenos Ayres, he hit upon the most probable cause of the men’s fright. It was the menacing state of the weather that struck fear into their craven hearts. Dark snow-laden clouds banking up from the south, a spatter of rain and sleet, a wind with ice needles in its breath—and they had thought that the winter was upon them. Pedro had started too late; he himself must have known it by then. But he would not give in. Perhaps the men urged him to turn back, pleaded with him; but dogged, and resolute even to ferocity, he drove them on. Then waiting for an occasion, they fell upon him and his fellow slave-driver, disarmed them, and left them to perish. The doomed pair wandered hither and thither, lost themselves in a gathering darkness of sluggish death. Storms of snow hid the faint light. The wind cut them. They sat down in the shelter of these rocks to wait till the wind dropped. It was a bad place, the worst possible place, if the wind changed its quarter and the snow began to drift. They slept, and woke no more. The snow covered them; the sun melted the snow. Twice they had been covered and uncovered.
Rancour against a treacherous friend had vanished, and a fierce impersonal indignation moved Dyke as he thought of the treachery of those half-bred dogs. The damnable curs—to leave their leaders, taking food, arms, everything. It made one sick. But, as he knew, things like this happen in the Andes—have always been happening.
Philosophising presently, he spoke of fear, and of what a horrible force it is. The most degrading of all passions, it would seem also the most powerful. Half the wickedness of the world can be traced to it. When it binds five or six people together in its loathsome clutch, there is no enormity that they may not commit, because—and this is so terrible—fear felt in common by five or six men is not five or six separate fears added together, but multiplied together many times.
And Emmie, looking round her, thought that this place might well be the primeval home of fear; in this overwhelming loneliness, among these dark cliffs, the stealthy grey shadows, and the sunlight that seemed to make the solid rock tremble, fear was originally engendered; so that the first live matter, waking to life here, was afraid—afraid of all things, even of itself. It was only her transient thought. She herself had no fear. Why should she? She was with Anthony Dyke.
They resumed the march. There was a question of burying the corpses, but in view of the evident reluctance of Manuel and the others, Dyke gave up this intention. The pious task would have entailed a considerable labour and waste of time. “Leave them there as a warning,” said Manuel, not to Dyke but to the empty air. He had fished out his crucifix, and looking back, he crossed himself and shivered. “Leave them to the condors,” said one Indian to another. “The condors left them so long without touching them. Let no one touch them now.” All were eager to get away from the sinister spot.
A profound depression of the spirits had fallen upon them. Again they moved languidly and needed frequent rallying. They spoke apathetically, if not sullenly. Dyke dealt gently with them, and pleased them by making the day’s march shorter than he had wished. At night, when they had eaten their food and Dyke as usual went and talked to them, they seemed contented enough.
They camped at a point where one enormous rock—a monster carried by ice and stranded here thousands of years ago—stood isolated in the middle of the way. Manuel Balda pitched Dyke’s tent and made the sleeping-place behind this rock, out of sight of the camp-fire and the men, very neatly and snugly. More silent than was his wont, but as efficient as ever, he carried out his customary duties, boiled their tea, gave them their supper.
The moon had risen high and was shedding its gentle radiance far and near, as Emmie and Dyke came round the broken angles of the big rock, and standing side by side, looked down at their little camp. All was peaceful; the familiar aspect of the nightly assemblage gave one a sense of comfort and security. The men lay huddled on the ground with saddles for pillows; the mules, some with shining moonlit coats, some dark and shadowy, were ranged behind their deposited burdens. In the profound silence one could hear the slightest movement, and a note of the bell as the madrina raised her head startled one by the sharpness of the sound. Beyond this one spot of animated existence the moonlight showed them the valley stretching away tenantless through its stone walls, like an unused passage in a dead world. There was no need to post sentries on guard; there were no living foes that could attack the camp. Dyke and Emmie went back behind their rock, and they too lay down to sleep.