CHAPTER XV

A HARD STRUGGLE

Running an ostrich with dogs -- Crossing Santa Cruz River -- Horses troublesome -- Lose my way -- Launch refitted -- Diary of rough days -- Crossing the bar -- Nasty predicament -- Wreck imminent -- Storm -- Ascensio's Bay -- Changeable weather -- Dangerous lakes -- Squalls rushing down from gorges of the Cordillera -- Icebergs -- Ashore for fuel -- Squall comes on -- Cut off from launch -- Miserable night -- Wind lulls -- Aboard again -- Crossing Hell-gate -- Cow Monte harbour -- Bernardo's fire -- Fighting the fire -- News of the world -- Rumours of war -- Death of the Queen.

Late in the evening of the same day Burbury arrived with the horses, and upon the following morning I rode on with him to pass the troop over the Santa Cruz River. We took with us one of Cattle's hounds, and sighting some ostriches on the way we gave chase. The dog had a rope affixed to his collar, by which Burbury had been leading him, and I had no time to take it off before letting him go. In spite of this disability, with the rope trailing behind him, the big black hound pulled down one of the birds. I did not then know how valuable that ostrich was to be to us.

We reached the Santa Cruz about 7 A.M., and, after a considerable amount of persuasion, we managed to induce the horses to enter the water.

One of the great dangers of driving a _tropilla_ into a river is the chance that, when they do take to the water, your own mount is very likely to rush in after them, and, before you can free yourself, he will have carried you into the pull of the current, and, of course, beyond your depth. Therefore it is always well to do this kind of work bare-back, with only a bridle in your horse's mouth, so that you can fling yourself off at any moment. It is also well to unbuckle the loop of the rein; the omission of the latter precaution has resulted in the drowning of horses on many occasions.

After seeing Burbury safely across, I started on my tramp back to the camp at the mouth of the Leona. Fortunately, I carried the whole ostrich with me, as I thought it was quite possible we might be held back by bad weather in our voyage up the lake.

Cattle and Bernardo had stayed with the launch to prepare her for probable rough handling by the waters of Lake Argentino, and it was lucky they did so, as events proved. Cattle lighted a smoke to give me my direction, and I was tempted to try a short cut, which led me across an interminable series of sandhills mottled with the tracks of foxes and lions (pumas).

When I got into camp we held a small festival in honour of the launch's good behaviour, and drank to her health and good luck in a cup of tea sweetened with the last of our sugar. But it never does to rejoice prematurely, and our way along the north shore of the lake turned out to be a battle with adverse winds, rain, and vindictive bad weather.

The launch presented quite a different appearance by the time I returned. The engine-room hatch had been covered by a canvas hood, and bulwarks formed by lashing oars to strengthen the wire railing which ran round the deck. The wheel had been rigged up forward and protected by a weather-dodger. The cargo had been carefully stowed, and, in fact, every precaution taken to ensure the safety of the boat and to make her seaworthy.

The following is taken from my diary, which carries us from hour to hour of the next few troubled days:

"_February 21._--It blew pretty hard all through the morning, and the bar of the Leona was quite impassable; but towards evening the wind dropped slightly, so we got up steam and started. We ran out over the bar, fighting our way by inches through the heavy surf, but just beyond it the engine broke down, and we were at the mercy of the wind and waves. It looked as if we were being driven back to certain shipwreck, for the launch could not live in the seas that were breaking on the bar. I cut loose one of the oars which formed our bulwark, and both Cattle and I did what we could to prevent her turning broadside on.

"I was engaged in this work at the stern when I heard Bernardo shout, 'Mr. Preechard! Mr. Preechard!'

"I lay my full length along the deck and looked down at Bernardo in the engine-room. He was holding on to the pump, which was spouting steam and water. There was no room for two people in the engine-room, nor in that angry sea was there much possibility of my getting down there. So I lay along the port decking, and slipped my feet under the after-hatch, thanking Providence for my length, and so managed to hold the pump down while Bernardo tried to repair the damage.

"Every now and then the seas caught us almost broadside on and broke heavily, nearly sweeping me over with them. My head being outside, I could see Cattle clinging on like a cat, and doing all that man could do to keep us from swinging round. We were on the bar, and scarcely twenty yards outside the fiercest of the breakers. As it was, big seas kept sweeping over the launch and crashing on her plates, making her roll appallingly.

"Between us and the shore was from one hundred to one hundred and fifty yards of yeasty surge, dominated by a heavy current setting south. The anchor continued to drag, and we hung on while Bernardo fought with screws and nuts for our lives. While we drifted back over the bar, nearly capsizing as we did so, it became obvious that our only course lay in first getting in the anchor and then putting it out again with a good length of chain. In spite of the almost inconceivable rolling of our craft, Cattle was successful in his attempt to do this, and the launch came prow on to the breakers, which were losing something of their fury as they crashed across the bar, twenty yards in front of us.

"Meantime, Bernardo did not relax his efforts to get the engines working once more. We were, as I have explained, a couple of hundred yards from the shore, towards which the full force of the wind, aided by the current I have mentioned as setting south towards the mouth of the Santa Cruz, was drifting us.

"The anchor dragged again, and we had to undertake the difficult business of getting it in, and taking a second chance of dropping it on better holding ground.

"We were tossing upon the bar for an hour and twenty minutes, during which time poor Bernardo was violently seasick. It made us laugh to hear him apostrophising the launch in the words, 'Be--she make me----' I will not conclude his sentence.

"At length, however, the Swede coaxed the engines into once more performing their appointed duties, and as putting back would have been a more difficult business than going forward, we began to forge slowly ahead. It was now between five and six o'clock, and there was a freezing south-west wind booming out of the Cordillera, but when darkness fell this lulled for a short time and we made the most of our chances to push forward. But, later, it came on to blow heavily, the seas rose high and short, and in the night-sky overhead only a few stars were visible through the racing clouds. The wind veered to the south-west, and we were off a lee shore set with rocks and icebergs, and there was no anchorage for another twelve miles at least.

"The wind again veered a point to the southward after a time, and it soon became evident that the launch, quivering and swept continually by the waves, was making but little headway, while our stock of fuel was growing low, and would not last us for the run to the anchorage.

"I shouted the facts to Cattle, who was steering at the time, and he suggested that we should try to make Ascensio's Bay--the place where the famous horse-stealer and Gaucho, Brunel, used to hide and slay the _tropillas_ he robbed from the Indians. As Cattle and I were discussing the question in shouts, a big sea swamped us, almost carrying Cattle overboard with it and billowing along the deck and nearly drowning out the engine-room.

"Cattle had made some trips about Lake Argentino in a canvas boat, but had never been in Ascensio's Bay. But, as the night was growing darker and the gale rising, we resolved to make for it. At last, through the noise and battering of the grey-black water, we reached the shelter of the promontory by the bay and succeeded in feeling our way in. There we dropped anchors from both bow and stern, drew off some water from the boiler to make a _maté_ which we drank, and afterwards lying down in the after-hatch instantly fell asleep. Bernardo occupied the fore-hatch. We were too tired to dream of eating anything, and, in spite of our close quarters and the cold, we did not wake till morning.

"The 23rd dawned calm and fine, and the first view of the spot in which we were anchored made me think that something more than mere luck had been with us during our entry upon the previous night. The mouth of the bay was dotted with an outcrop of toothlike rocks.

"The dawn developed into a morning with strong sun, and we were off early. For two hours all went well. Then came a shiver creeping across the glassy surface of the lake, after that a swell, and in a matter of twenty minutes the quiet lake had become as nasty and as angry a piece of water as can be imagined. This change is eminently typical of the temper of the Andean lakes; they cannot be depended upon from hour to hour. In the present instance at 7.45 A.M. we were steaming, as I have said, through calm water, yet at 8.15 one sea of every four was dashing in a cloud of spray over the boat. The reason of these sudden changes is not far to seek.[23]

"Here, encircled by snow-capped mountains and bounded by high cliffs, the waters of Argentino are often struck by swift squalls descending from the gorges. The voyager may be, as we were, many miles distant from the actual spot where the storm first strikes, but the squall rushes down the funnel-like openings, bringing a heavy sea with it. The seas are also very short, which more than doubles the difficulty of navigation.

"On this occasion the sun was obscured and the outlook to the westward became more and more menacing. The launch began to creak and groan as usual, and to make but slight headway. Far away glimmered an iceberg, which lay at the entrance of the bay that marked our next harbourage. Soon it became clear that we should never be able to reach its friendly shelter without gathering a fresh supply of fuel. There was only one alternative left to us, and that was to put in close to the shore, and either wade or swim off to get more.

"The squall had now more or less spent itself, so we ran in close, gaining some small shelter from a promontory which ended in a big boulder.

"To attain such shelter as the promontory offered it was necessary to make our way through a group of rocks. This we did, and the wind sinking, Cattle and I scrambled ashore with the axes and fell to work while Bernardo remained on board.

"Before, however, we had gathered half the required quantity of wood a second squall, more heavy than the first, came screaming across the lake, tearing the launch from her anchorage and almost driving her upon the beach. We stripped off some of our clothes and waded down into the water, and after a ten-minutes hard struggle we succeeded in getting her back into deep water, where she again dropped anchor.

"We returned to our work ashore, and cut and piled a good store of fuel, almost as much as we needed, on the shingle ready to carry aboard, but the violence of the waves put all hope of embarkation out of the question for the time. This was about 10 A.M., and all day the wind increased in violence. A stately procession of icebergs began to float down from the northerly arms of the lake and squall succeeded squall. Soon it became evident that the launch was drifting again, and I shouted to Bernardo, who was now within hearing distance of the shore, to break up an oar and use it for fuel. Luckily he had kept up fire in the furnace and steam in the boiler, and as the weather was growing rapidly worse, I ordered him to steam up over the anchor, and afterwards to take the boat a quarter of a mile out and there drop anchor with all the length of chain out that we possessed.

"What followed gave to us, I think, perhaps the most heartbreaking moments we experienced throughout the whole trip. While Bernardo was getting up enough steam to carry out orders, the launch, still drifting, swooped nearer and nearer a reef of submerged rocks. As she was in deep water, Cattle and I could do nothing to help; we were compelled to watch helplessly from the shore and rage at our own impotence. We called to Bernardo to keep her off with an oar, and while he was unlashing one the stern of the launch and, more than all, her precious propeller barely escaped being smashed to pieces as she rose and fell on the rollers. To us, looking from the shore, it seemed as if her last hour was come, and it appeared hard indeed that she should have run safely through so many perils only to end her existence in the lake before we had had time to carry out any part of the exploration on which we had set our hearts.

"At the crucial moment, however, Bernardo managed to pole her clear and give her steam. She moved slowly out and anchored far off shore.

"Evening drew on, but the wind showed no signs of dropping, as it usually did at the rising or setting of the sun. There was nothing for it but to make up our minds to a night ashore. We found ourselves in a dilemma, for we had our whole supply of food on shore, while, with the exception of my poncho, which I brought with me to dry, Bernardo had all the rugs and blankets in the launch. However, we made the best of it by building up a big shelter of drift-wood and bushes. Then we lit a huge fire, for our clothes were soaking, and essayed to dry them.

"Meantime the launch was riding out the storm as well as could be expected, but taking a good deal of water aboard all the same. It grew dark and the last we saw of her that night, her anchor was holding and a big sea was racing aft. Bernardo had got on the hatches and gone to bed, we supposed, for we did not see him the whole time save once, and then he was bailing furiously."

The sky was black with the promise of rain, so we heaped up the big fire, filled the cooking-pots with water, and spreading the poncho on the ground took our places upon it. It was not such a very bad night after all. Things rarely fulfil their promise of disagreeableness--things of this kind anyway. We passed the night somehow with the help of our pipes and an occasional brew of sugarless tea. I never desired sugar so much as then. Sugarless tea is far less warming than sugared. Sleep was well-nigh impossible. It was too cold for that, and, besides, one or other of us was always up and trying to pick out the launch from the surrounding mass of spindrift and tumbling black and grey waters.

In those latitudes the wind generally rises or falls, as the case may be, with the setting or rising of the sun, and eagerly we waited to see if the dawn would bring any change in our uncomfortable position. But at dawn it was blowing, if anything, harder than ever. The launch, however, was all right, although there was no sign of Bernardo. We were driven to make a breakfast of berries from the califate-bushes, of which a few mean specimens grew sparsely on the hillside. It is a desolate place, that northern shore of Argentino.

When the sun came out we lay down and slept in its liquid rays. A little after midday we cooked some _fariña_ with mutton fat and ate it. The gale was still tearing across the water, and we began to count over our resources. We still had the greater part of the ostrich which the hound Moses had killed on the way to the River Santa Cruz, but it was an immature bird, and would provide us with no more than three meagre meals. A couple of handfuls of _fariña_ were yet in the bottom of the bag, we had a half-tin of tea and three-parts of a plug of tobacco.

As for Bernardo, he had now been nearly thirty hours without food; indeed, to be accurate, he had been fifty hours without food, thirty of them in the launch, for we had started work on a _maté_. If we could have made him hear, he might have attached a line to the life-buoy and floated her off, and we could have sent him back supplies.

We had made certain of another night of discomfort, so we gathered another big pile of firewood. Cattle's leg, that he had strained on the previous day, was giving him much pain. But when the sun was already dipping behind the summits of the Cordillera the storm began to lull. We had little hope that Bernardo could stand out much longer against starvation, so after half an hour, as the seas were going down, we thought it well to try and get off to the launch.

We went down to the beach, and, after much hailing, roused the Swede. By signs I told him to come in as close as he dared, which meant to within twenty or twenty-five yards of the shingle. This time he got her in a better position, and we stripped and waded in with the wood. It took us about forty journeys, and the water was abominably cold. I do not think two men ever worked much harder during the time we were at it, so before very long we were on board with everything.

Fearing to remain near the shore we got up steam, and with exceeding thankfulness bade good-bye to that inhospitable beach. I asked Bernardo how much longer he thought he could have held out. He said two days, and, in fact, appeared to think he had been better off with the blankets and his pipe and the warmth of the fore-hatch than we with food on shore. First and last he was a fine fellow, patient, quiet and hard-working. As to his being better off than Cattle and myself, that was a matter of individual taste, I suppose. As a rule, indeed, the average man will, as far as my experience goes, sacrifice his food to his bed nearly every time, especially when the wind is blowing out of the snows.

Evening soon settled down into night, and we ran on by starlight to our next anchorage, an almost land-locked bay, where we made merry on the remains of the ostrich. I also discovered some flour in the afterhold which had been overlooked, enough to make three small dampers. We were uncommonly glad to resume our rugs that night.

On the 24th we gathered more wood and put to sea. We meant to reach the southern shore of the lake on the Burmeister Peninsula, and there put in to a good anchorage not far from Cattle's headquarters. But to do this it was necessary to pass across Hell-gate, the opening to the north arm or North Fjord of the lake, always a difficult stretch of water owing to the fact that squalls perpetually blew down upon it from the funnel formed by the winding gorges of the upper lake. We soon saw the two dark bluffs beyond which the water wound away behind the outlying buttresses of the mountains, whose snow-caps glimmered against the wintry sky. We did not escape scot-free, for a squall duly caught us, and the tossing sent everything in the launch adrift. We ran by five icebergs and once the pump refused to act, and things looked awkward, but in the end, to make a long story short, we steamed into our shelter, which we called Cow Monte Harbour, and tied up the launch with no small thankfulness, for she was leaking badly through the cracked plate I have before referred to.

As the grass was dry we could not, with safety, make a fire sufficiently large to signal Burbury to bring up the horses, as had been arranged, so we sent on Bernardo with a message. He started off in his big boots and we had no idea of the mischief he was to drop into before we saw him again. He was accustomed to the pampas round about the town of Santa Cruz, where you can light a fire with impunity, but amongst the high grass growing in the valleys of the foothills of the Cordillera a fire is certain to spread over an immense area. Finding the way long, perhaps, Bernardo sent up a brace of smokes as signals. We saw them, and knew at once what was likely to happen.

When the horses arrived we bundled on to them and rode away to try and stop the conflagration. There were two fires raging, and our only chance lay in being able to arrest their spreading beyond the shores of a dry lagoon, which mercifully extended between them and the summer-dried, well-grassed marsh lying under Mount Buenos Aires and Mount Frias, where Cattle's pioneer-farm was situated. It would have been a distressing return for his co-operation and help had one of my men raised a fire to sweep over his land and destroy his whole stock of horses, sheep and cattle, a result that was for a time imminent.

We all provided ourselves with sheepskins and began our attempt to beat out the fire. It was raging in bone-dry grass and thorn and the flames leaped up and scorched our faces. Every blow with the sheepskin sent up a shower of sparks that got into one's eyes and ears, and it appeared as if we should never make headway against the blaze. We might clear ten feet for a moment, but as we turned away the flames would eat their way back and, rekindling, flare up in waving tongues and roar again. Of course we were to windward, on the lee side the smoke rolled away in a solid cloud. I do not know how long we worked on that upper ring of fire, but slowly we succeeded in beating it out by sheer weight and repetition of blows.

The wind had by this time dropped a little, and the course of the main blaze set downhill. At length we had beaten out a half-circle and came to the crux of the affair. If we could but blot out the fire to the south, where it was burning savagely among high bushes and dry thorn, it was probable the situation would be saved.

We took a short rest of four or five minutes and began again. The smoke was gathering and rolling in great gouts, and we could see nothing save the flames on the one side of us and the black blinding dust on the other. As for ourselves, we were as black and scorched as singed rats. We knew that the next ten minutes would decide the matter.

Beside the fire ran a meandering cow or game track, and it was at this line that we meant to try and cut off the flames, which were rapidly spreading and getting out of hand. One was conscious of nothing but the thud of the sheepskins and the figures of the workers leaping in and out of the smoke and flame. I have never witnessed a wilder scene. The men shouted as they worked. It was like a battle-picture seen in a dream. All along the cow-track, where the fire lipped it, the sheepskins rose and fell. A dense dun-coloured cloud rolled out and up, lit every moment by explosions of sparks.

Presently it became a race for a spot some 200 yards ahead, where a line of green damp grass might stop the fire and force it in another direction. To cut it off at this point would make the remainder of our task more easy. But just on the nearer side of the grass line a number of high bushes were growing, and their strong roots and lower branches gave the flames a definite hold. Now and again, too, one had to run back and stamp out some sudden recrudescence of the flame. There is no need to describe the last half-hour; only, when the yellow circle of fire had given place to a smouldering black ring, we were ready to lie down on our blackened sheepskins and feel neither glad nor sorry but only wearily tired.

To beat out a fire is about the hardest sort of effort a man can make, for no spell of rest can be obtained without losing the results of previous labour. Afterwards, when we made a round of the fires to make sure of safety, we found them sinking sullenly into black deadness.

We were especially lucky in the direction taken by the fire, as, had it burnt along any other line, it is almost certain that our camp and all that we possessed would have been destroyed. Such a disaster actually occurred to Cattle some years ago in the north of the country. He was then journeying with two companions, when a half-breed boy he had with him was foolish enough to allow a camp-fire to spread among the surrounding grass. The pioneers were able to save nothing but a pair of _boleadores_ and a Winchester rifle with the seven cartridges that happened to be in it. The party fortunately possessed several hounds, by whose efforts the stock of meat was kept up, otherwise it is more than likely that their case would have been a serious one.

The interval between the time of our starting for Lake Viedma and our return was in all but eleven days. During those eleven days much happened that brought back most vividly to me old boyish dreams of travel and romance. I had realised some of them, but risk and adventure, which enchant us in the glamour of far-off contemplation, are apt on nearer view to lose in romance what they gain in reality.

On the same day of the fire, news, brought by some wandering Indian or Gaucho, reached us; rumours passing from mouth to mouth as they will in a wonderful manner over the most sparsely populated country. The first we heard was a report of war, a real war-scare, such as might have originated from the fertile imagination of a Haïtian journalist. The Russians were said to be marching upon India, and France had joined hands with them against England.

It was but the barest outline, yet it shook and excited us out there in the ends of the earth just as if we had formed items of a crowd in Fleet Street.

Following on this came that other heavy tidings indeed, the death of the Queen. We took off our hats, and at first nothing was said. The news struck each man of us. There was a sense of loss and of the blankness of a personal calamity, which expressed themselves at last in a few odd homely words.

There, 7000 miles away, the abstract idea of the nation became concrete. One had no picture in one's mind of England that did not bear in the foreground, filling the heart and eye, that gracious, royal, simple, noble figure, which for so long had drawn out towards itself the highest patriotism of the race. The tumult of a nation's mourning was taken up and echoed feebly here as in other remote corners of the earth. Thousands of pens have borne witness to the world-wide sorrow. No need to say more, but while I write the scene comes back, as some moments of one's life will and do come--the broad blue heavens, the wide lake, the wind, the smell of grass and califate-bushes, the grasping after shattered fancies, and the heavy acceptance of the hour assigned.

FOOTNOTE:

[23] This we came to understand very thoroughly at a later date, when we penetrated to the end of the long twisting arms of the lake.