The Wine-Dark Sea

by Patrick O'Brian

  The messenger came running along the line; his face was blue, but his breath was even, unhurried. He kissed Eduardo's knee, unwound the coloured cords and strips from his staff and handed them up. The train moved on; Stephen gathered his reins. 'No,' said Eduardo. 'Pray watch. You will see me read them as quick as a clearly-written letter.'

  This he did, but as he read his expression changed. His pleasant ingenuous young face closed and at the end he said, 'I beg your pardon, don Esteban: I had thought it was just my agent in Cuzco asking whether he might send a draft of llamas to Potosi, this being the runner who usually brings his messages'. But now it is quite another matter. We must go no farther south. Gayongos has a ship for Valparaiso that will touch at Arica. We must cut across by the Huechopillan... it is a high pass, don Esteban, but you will not mind a high pass. I am very sorry I must forego the pleasure of showing you the rheas of the altiplano this time and the great wastes of salt; but not far from the Huechopillan there is a lake on which I can almost promise you some most uncommon ducks and geese: gulls too and rails. Forgive me.' He spurred along the track, and as Stephen slowly followed he heard him giving orders that sent three quarters of the train back along the road, such as it was.

  Stephen was intimately convinced that the quipus had brought news of some hostile cousins waiting for Eduardo in the context of that movement for liberation he had touched upon the day before as well as word of Gayongos' ship, which might more sensibly have put in a little farther south, in the realm of Chile. For Arica, as both he and Eduardo knew, was still in the government of Peru: yet pointing out the obvious could only cause distress, fruitless argument, bad blood.

  The greater part of the returning band flowed round him as he sat there on his mule, passing silently, with apparent indifference or at the most a certain veiled disapproval. Riding on to join those who remained he saw Eduardo's face, impassive and firmly in command, though his eyes sometimes wandered towards Stephen with some hint of anxious questioning. Stephen still said nothing, yet he did observe that now their company was made up of the abler looking (and indeed more amiable) men leading the stronger beasts, and they with larger packs. On, and within half an hour their quiet rhythm had returned.

  At noon they were on a broad stony platform, bare flat rock at the convergence of three mountain spurs, hot in the sun; and here their track could no longer be seen at all. Yet neither Eduardo nor his men seemed in any way concerned; they marched steadily across and turned right-handed where the westernmost spur ran down to the little plain, travelling steadily on through a sheltered and relatively fertile stretch of country, green here and there with tola bushes and shaggy with coarse yellow grass.

  The going was easier, much clearer in direction and smoother by far. 'We have struck into one of the Inca post-roads,' said Eduardo, breaking the silence. 'In a little while, where there is marshy ground by day, it is paved. My ancestors may not have known the wheel, but they did know how to make roads. Beyond the marshy piece, where we may put up some wildfowl, there is a great tumble of boulders from an earthquake so long ago that they are covered with lichen, and not only lichen but a very curious woody fungus that I believe you may not have seen. It is called yaretta, and it grows at this height from here to the westward; and together with guanaco dung the heads make excellent firing. The rock-fall abounds with viscachas, and if we take our guns we may be spared guinea-pig for a great while: viscachas are capital eating. But Doctor, I am afraid you are sad. I am so sorry to have disappointed you of our altiplano rheas.'

  'I am not at all disappointed, friend. I have seen a little flock of white-winged finches and a bird I took to be a mountain caracara.'

  Eduardo was unconvinced. He looked into Stephen's face and said, 'Still, if only this weather holds' - glancing anxiously at the pure sky overhead - 'we should reach the pass in three days, and we will surely find wonders on my lake.'

  On the morning of the second day the pass was clearly to be seen, a little above the snow-line between two matching peaks that soared another five thousand feet, brilliant white in the almost horizontal sun.

  'There is the post-house,' said Eduardo, pointing his glass, 'just under the snow and a little to the right. It was built by Huayna Capac, and it is as strong as ever. The pass is high, as you see, but on the far side there is an easy road, downhill all the way to one of my brother's silver-mines and a village where they grow the best potatoes in Peru as well as corn and barley, and they breed excellent llamas - these animals all came from there, and that is one of the reasons that they step out so well. It is true that after that we have to cross a chasm, with the Uribu flowing far below, but there is a hanging bridge in quite good repair, and you do not dislike heights that fill weak minds with horror. Sailors pay no attention to heights - a circumnavigator is inured to prodigious heights. What have you found, don Esteban?'

  'A curious beetle.'

  'Very curious indeed. One day I shall really set myself to the study of beetles. My lake too is on the far side. It seems to me that we should reach the post-house in plenty of time for the men to settle in and for you and me to go on to my lake. At this time of year it will not even skim over with ice until well after sunset, and we may find ducks and geese by the hundred. We will take Molina, the best llama, to carry what we shoot.'

  'If you are as mistaken about the birds as you are about my head for heights, Molina will have no great burden to carry, at all,' reflected Stephen, who had often heard, each time with deeper dismay, of the spidery Inca bridges upon which intrepid Indians crossed torrents raging a thousand feet below them, even hauling immobilized animals over by means of a primitive windlass, the whole construction swaying wildly to and fro as even a single traveller reached the middle, the first false step being the last.

  'How long does it take to fall a thousand feet?' he asked himself, and as the troop set out he tried to make the calculation; but his arithmetical powers were and always had been weak. 'Long enough to make an act of contrition, at all events,' he said, abandoning the answer of seven hours and odd seconds as absurd.

  On and on: up and up. This had been the pattern for a great while, but now the up and up was growing far more pronounced ; now it was often a question of leading his mule again; and now he had to concentrate his mind on keeping up wherever the road grew steep. His breath was coming short; his heart beat a hundred and twenty strokes a minute; his eyesight wavered.

  'You are in a brown study, I find,' said Eduardo, whose spirits had revived with the altitude.

  'I was contemplating on the physiology of animals that live in a rarefied atmosphere,' said Stephen. 'Surely the exact dissection of a vicuna would show some very remarkable adaptations?'

  'There can be no doubt of it,' replied Eduardo. 'And at present we too mean to adapt our own persons for the last stretch with a draught of mate. Do you choose to dismount?'

  Stephen did so, very carefully avoiding the least hint of unsteadiness. He could scarcely see, but he was most unwilling to show any sign of the mountain-sickness that had certainly come upon him. When his head cleared from the effort of swinging out of the saddle he looked up and saw to his relief that they were now quite near the snow-line, above sixteen thousand feet. He had never been so high, and he had every right to be mountain-sick: this was no discreditable weakness.

  Already smoke was rising from the guanaco dung, the woody fungus heads and a few of those bushes that burned green; and presently the gourds of mate were passing round. Stephen drew in the hot cheering gusts through his silver tube, ate a dried peach from Chile, and then like all the rest he drew out his pouch of coca-leaves, preparing a moderate ball spread with quinoa ash, chewed it slightly to start the flow and then eased it into his cheek. The familiar tingling began almost at once, followed by the beginning of that curious numbness which had so startled him many years ago.

  Mountain-sickness faded, anxiety with it; strength returned. He gazed at the climbing road, the last stretch, three steep traverses zigzagging up to t
he post-house, into the snow and over the pass. It would be walking every step of the way. He did not mind at all.

  'Will you not ride, don Esteban?' asked Eduardo, holding the stirrup for him.

  'No, sir,' said Stephen. 'The animal is extremely tired - look at his hanging lip, God be with him - whereas I am now quite recovered, a sprightly popinjay.'

  A little less sprightly by the time they reached the massive post-house, built, like some of those sections of the road cut deep into the mountainside, of vast rocks so exactly shaped that they outstripped all reasonable conjecture, a little less sprightly, but perfectly human. He took the liveliest interest in the yaretta fungus growing on these rocks and on the inner walls, and Eduardo said to him, 'How glad I am to see you so brisk. Although we reached here in such good time I was afraid you might be too tired to see my lake. Do you think that after say an hour's rest you would like to go? There is some cloud in the east, and as you know winds sometimes get up in the evening; but an hour's rest would still leave us time.'

  'Dear Eduardo,' said Stephen, 'the earlier we go the more we shall see. I fairly dote on alpine lakes, and this one as I recall has a fine fringe of reeds.'

  It had indeed a fine fringe of reeds, a very fine deep fringe, unique in Stephen Maturin's extensive experience of reeds in that they grew not out of glutinous mud but from a layer of broken stones brought down by some not far distant combination of earthquake and flood from one of the nearby glaciers. This allowed them to walk out dryfoot with their guns and spyglasses, leaving Molina on a long tether among the clumps of spiny ichu grass.

  When first they had seen it from above, at some distance, the lake was clearly full of wildfowl - rafts of duck, geese at the far end where a stream from the northern glacier came in, and gulls over all - but by the time they had made their way through to a sheltered point near the open water that allowed them a clear view although they remained unseen, they found that there were also remarkable numbers of rails, waders and the smaller herons.

  'What wealth!' they cried, and began a first eager census of genera at least before the identification or attempted identification of species. Presently they grew calmer, leaving the fine-work until they could obtain specimens, and they sat at their ease, gazing over the water at a distant crowd of flamingoes, gabbling steadily in their goose-like manner. A straggling line of newcomers, pale pink, scarlet and black in the declining sun, passed over to join the rest; and Stephen, watching them as they crossed from left to right, observed, 'For me flamingoes belong essentially to the Mediterranean lagoons, by definition at the level of the sea; and to find them up here, in an air so thin it is a wonder that their wings can bear them, gives the whole landscape something of the qualities of a dream. It is true that their voices are slightly different and that their plumage has a deeper red, but that if anything strengthens the impression, like losing one's way in a familiar town - a sense of..." He broke off as a little band of teal came racing across well within range and both men cocked their fowling-pieces.

  Eduardo was poised, but seeing Stephen lower his gun he did not fire. 'How absurd,' said Stephen, 'I quite forgot to ask you how you manage without a dog. We could not have brought them down on land, and no man would ever wade far less swim for all love in that cruel bitter cold wetness for anything short of a two-headed phoenix.'

  'No,' said Eduardo. 'What we cannot bring down on the shore, we leave where they fall. The lake freezes hard by night and we pick them up in the morning. But it is strange that you should have spoken of a dream - waking dream. I have the same feeling, though not at all for the same clear reason. There is something strange here. The birds are not settled. As you see, they are perpetually moving, the groups breaking up. And there is too much noise. They are uneasy. So is Molina: I have heard him three times now. There is something unnatural. God send there may not be an earthquake.'

  'Amen.'

  After a long pause Eduardo said, 'I do not believe I shall kill anything this evening, don Esteban... What do you say to sitting here and counting and naming as well as we can until the sun is half an hour from Taraluga over there - I have a quipu in my pocket to record them - and then going back across the Huechopillan to the post-house, where you can write them down at your leisure?'

  'With all my heart,' said Maturin. It had become increasingly evident to him that there was a whole series of pieties active in Eduardo's breast which had nothing to do with those of Christianity as it was ordinarily understood. Furthermore he was much attached to the young man; and he had not seen him so moved before, even when he received the message from Cuzco.

  They sat on, noting the passing birds, watching those farther off with their telescopes, comparing observations; and they were talking about the remarkable sense of the ominous or of impending change in animals - earthquake, eruption, eclipse (even lunar eclipses in certain bats) - when a flock of huachua geese flew straight at them at an extraordinary speed, passing just over their heads and with so great a rush of wings that for a moment their words were lost. The geese all wheeled together, returned at the same height and speed, rose and then pitched on the water, tearing the surface and throwing it wide: they sat in a tight-packed group, their heads stretched up; and high over them the lake gulls turned, screaming, screaming.

  Another minute passed and a prodigious noise between a great thunder-clap and a broadside made both men start up, part the tall reeds and look behind them. They saw the snow of the two peaks on either side of the pass streaming out to leeward, streamers a mile long and more: then peaks and the pass itself vanished in a white turmoil.

  'It may not last,' cried Eduardo, catching up his gun. Stephen followed him as he went fast through the reeds to the place where they had left the llama. And indeed for some minutes it seemed that this one clap might be the end; but while Eduardo was fastening their belongings to the llama's pack-saddle, Stephen looked at the water. There was scarcely a creature left on it now, and all along the edge birds were pushing in among the reeds.

  Moving at that quick familiar short-paced Indian trot Eduardo and the llama set off over the powdering of snow for the true snowline and the pass. There was still enough day and enough light to cross it, going even at a moderate pace.

  A second thunder-clap, a triple roar several times repeated, and first the wind and then the snow engulfed them. Stephen, who weighed no great matter, was thrust first forward, then violently back, then plucked bodily up and flung against a rock. For a while he could see nothing, and crouched there shielding his face so that he should not breathe the flying powdered snow. Eduardo, who like the llama had thrown himself down at the first blast, found him, passed the tether round his waist and told him to hold on and keep moving for the love of God - Eduardo knew the path perfectly well - they would reach the snow-line and move on bent low - much easier up there - no hard falling -and the top of the pass would be blown clear.

  But it was not. When at last they had beaten their slow, gasping way up through the roaring, uneven wind in the increasing darkness they found that hitherto they had been in the relatively sheltered lee of the topmost ridge and that the pass itself received not only the full force of the blast but of that blast concentrated and magnified by the two converging sides of rock. The space between was a racing downward torrent of air and snow that now partook more and more of the cutting icy crust from the snowfields far to windward. It was quite impassable. The sun had vanished in a white blur at some forgotten or unnoticed point but by the grace of God a four-day moon gleaming at odd moments through breaks in the clouds of flying snow enabled Eduardo to reach a cleft in the rock-face. It just allowed them to shelter from the direct buffeting of the wind if not from its shattering noise, and to some degree from the rapidly increasing and mortal cold.

  It was a triangular cleft, the outer part filled with powdered snow. Eduardo kicked it into the mainstream, where it vanished instantly, thrust Stephen right into the sharp apex, followed him, dragging the llama into the opening where it lay on the
remaining snow, and squatted between the two. The llama tried to heave itself farther in, but this could not be: after a struggle Eduardo managed to shackle one bent knee and the poor beast gave up, lowering its long neck across them, with its head on Stephen's knee.

  Gradually, as they recovered from the immense exertion of the last hundred yards or so, and as their ears grew more accustomed to the wind's countless voices, all different, all enormously loud and oppressive in this shrieking pass, they exchanged a few words. Eduardo begged pardon for leading don Esteban into this - he should have known - there were signs - Tepee had told him it was a haunted, unlucky day - but these winds died with the midnight stars or at least with the rising sun. Would the Doctor like a ball of coca-leaves?

  Stephen had been so very near death from a racing heart, an inability to breathe at such a height and physical exhaustion that he had almost forgotten his pouch; and at this point he did not possess the bodily strength or the spiritual resolution to grope for it under his clothes. He accepted gratefully, fumbling across the llama's neck for the proffered quid.

  It had not been in his cheek five minutes before the extremity, the almost mortal extremity of fatigue died away. In ten minutes he was perfectly capable of reaching his own supply of leaves and ash, and of rearranging himself with what small degree of physical comfort the space allowed. He also felt a certain grateful warmth from the llama's head; but quite apart from that, mental comfort and a sense of divorce from time and immediate contingencies were already settling in his mind.

  They talked a little, or rather shouted, about the desirability of a thick drift of snow across the entrance. Yet the steadily increasing cold made the effort of shouting too great and each relapsed into a meditative silence, carefully spreading what clothes they had over the whole of their persons, particularly ears, noses, fingers. What passed for time or at least a kind of duration no doubt went on. Sleep in these circumstances seemed wholly out of the question, even if it had not been for the effect of coca-leaves, stronger by far than any coffee known to man, above all in the present heavy and steadily repeated doses.