Accordingly, Next Morning After Breakfast We Set Out, Without
Imparting Our Plans To Any One, And With Great Labour Dragged The
Trough To The Water.
It was a box-shaped thing, about twenty feet long
and two feet wide at the bottom and three at the top.
We were also
provided with three javelins, one for each of us, from my brother's
extensive armoury.
He had about that time been reading ancient history, and fired with
the story of old wars when men fought hand to hand, he had dropped
guns and pistols for the moment and set himself with furious zeal to
manufacture the ancient weapons - bows and arrows, pikes, shield,
battle-axes and javelins. These last were sticks about six feet long,
nicely made of pine-wood - he had no doubt bribed the carpenter to make
them for him - and pointed with old knife-blades six or seven inches
long, ground to a fearful sharpness. Such formidable weapons were not
required for our purpose: they would have served well enough if we had
been going out against Don Anastacio's fierce and powerful swine; but
it was his order, and to his wild and warlike imagination the toad-
like creatures were the warriors of some hostile tribe opposing us, I
forget if in Asia or Africa, which had to be conquered and extirpated.
No sooner had we got into our long, awkwardly-shaped boat than it
capsized and threw us all into the water; that was but the first of
some dozens of upsets and fresh drenchings we experienced during the
day. However, we succeeded in circumnavigating the lake and crossing
it two or three times from side to side, and in slaying seventy or
eighty of the enemy with our javelins.
At length, when the short, mid-winter day was in its decline, and we
were all feeling stiff and cold and half-famished, our commander
thought proper to bring the great lake battle, with awful slaughter of
our barbarian foes, to an end, and we wearily trudged home in our
soaking clothes and squeaking shoes. We were too tired to pay much
heed to the little sermon we had expected, and glad to get into dry
clothes and sit down to food and tea. Then to sit by the fire as close
as we could get to it, until we all began to sneeze and to feel our
throats getting sore and our faces burning hot. And, finally, when we
went burning and shivering with cold to bed we could not sleep; and
hark! the grand nightly chorus was going on just as usual. No, in
spite of the great slaughter we had not exterminated the enemy; on the
contrary, they appeared to be rejoicing over a great victory,
especially when high above the deep harsh notes the long-drawn, organ-
like sounds of the leaders were heard.
How I then wished, when tossing and burning feverishly in bed, that I
had rebelled and refused to take part in that day's adventure! I was
too young for it, and again and again, when thrusting one of the
creatures through with my javeline, I had experienced a horrible
disgust and shrinking at the spectacle. Now in my wakeful hours, with
that tremendous chanting in my ears, it all came back to me and was
like a nightmare.
CHAPTER XIII
A PATRIARCH OF THE PAMPAS
The grand old man of the plains - Don Evaristo Penalva, the Patriarch -
My first sight of his estancia house - Don Evaristo described - A
husband of six wives - How he was esteemed and loved by every one - On
leaving home I lose sight of Don Evaristo - I meet him again after
seven years - His failing health - His old first wife and her daughter,
Cipriana - The tragedy of Cipriana - Don Evaristo dies and I lose sight
of the family.
Patriarchs were fairly common in the land of my nativity: grave,
dignified old men with imposing beards, owners of land and cattle and
many horses, though many of them could not spell their own names;
handsome too, some of them with regular features, descendants of good
old Spanish families who colonized the wide pampas in the seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries. I do not think I have got one of this
sort in the preceding chapters which treat of our neighbours, unless
it be Don Anastacio Buenavida of the corkscrew curls and quaint taste
in pigs. Certainly he was of the old landowning class, and in his
refined features and delicate little hands and feet gave evidence of
good blood, but the marks of degeneration were equally plain; he was
an effeminate, futile person, and not properly to be ranked with the
patriarchs. His ugly grotesque neighbour of the piebald horses was
more like one. I described the people that lived nearest to us, our
next-door neighbours so to speak, because I knew them from childhood
and followed their fortunes when I grew up, and was thus able to give
their complete history. The patriarchs, the grand old gaucho
estancieros, I came to know, were scattered all over the land, but,
with one exception, I did not know them intimately from childhood, and
though I could fill this chapter with their portraits I prefer to give
it all to the one I knew best, Don Evaristo Penalva, a very fine
patriarch indeed.
I cannot now remember when I first made his acquaintance, but I was
not quite six, though very near it, when I had my first view of his,
house. In the chapter on "Some Early Bird Adventures," I have
described my first long walk on the plains, when two of my brothers
took me to a river some distance from home, where I was enchanted with
my first sight of that glorious waterfowl, the flamingo. Now, as we
stood on the brink of the flowing water, which had a width of about
two hundred yards at that spot when the river had overflowed its
banks, one of my elder brothers pointed to a long low house, thatched
with rushes, about three-quarters of a mile distant on the other side
of the stream, and informed me that it was the estancia house of Don
Evaristo Penalva, who was one of the principal landowners in that
part.
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