E sailed for many a day, Bob and I, up narrow channels and down wide ones, twisting and turning this way and that, east, west, north, south, because of wind and tide and cape and bay, and then we came to a kind of S-shaped strait. Through it we went and found that it opened into a wide water, as smooth as glass and so clear that we could see down to the sandy bottom where seaweeds clung to rocks and fishes swam in a strange greenish light. Then, by great good luck, we found a place where was deep water and followed the channel landward, and it turned out to be the cutting made by a stream of very cold water that came down from the mountain. So there was strange rowing for us, for we worked our boat into the rivulet which was so narrow that very often both oars were on the grassy land. When at last we stopped, it was because the banks came so close together that our boat blocked the passage, so we stepped to land as easily as one might step onto a wharf.
Next morning, having covered our things from the foxes and made all neat and shipshape, we set off on a walk, climbed a high ridge and looked for a while over a confusion of little islands and narrow straits, then wondered at the blue of sea and sky, and after that wandered down a long slope, to come soon to a pleasant valley, and the more we saw of it the better we liked it. It seemed to have everything desirable, soft grass, clear and cool water, shelter from the winds, and peaceful quiet. A half-dozen horses could be seen a little way off, and on a blue hill in the distance there were cows and sheep. Soon we heard the voices of children and the interlacing echoes. So we rounded the hill and came upon houses, four of them altogether and all thatched with yellow rushes. The children that we had heard we saw, and they were playing with a pet huanaco, and at one of the doors, seated on a rush-bottomed chair was an old woman whose face was wrinkled and brown though her body seemed as supple as that of a young person. Seeing us the children left their play and stood, their dove-eyes full of wonder.
For the rest of that day we rested, enjoying the place. In the evening, when men and lads returned from their hunting or their fishing or their herding or whatever they did, there was good fellowship in the pleasant December twilight, and as we talked and sang we became better acquainted. Of course, like all travellers in that or any other open country, we had to tell the tale of our wanderings, how we came to be there and why, and when we had done, one or the other of them told us what might be said to be the history of their people, one helping the other out, correcting the talker when he was at fault, and sometimes taking the tale from him to tell it better.
They talked Spanish, for all were originally from Chile, and we learned that the old woman’s husband, who was no longer living, had been a soldier who had fought against Peru and was on board a warship called the Esmeralda which was sunk by another, and on that sad day, she said, more than a hundred were drowned. A merciful Heaven permitted her husband to get ashore after much danger, and wandering, he had found the valley in which we then were (for having found it he had gone to his own place, which I took to be Ancud or somewhere near there), and with three neighbour families they had wandered, delighted to find a place where were no din and clashes and war. “And,” said the old woman, lifting her hands and throwing them a little apart, “here by the grace of Heaven we are at peace.”
When she had done the children chattered a little, insisting that she had missed the most interesting part of all. She should, they held, tell the strangers the tale of how the valley had been made, of why there was a river, of how it had come to pass that there were woods through which the river flowed and especially why Laguna Viedma was salt. The caballeros, they were sure, would like to know all that, it being a tale most wonderful and strange. But the old woman shook her head and made herself a cigarette, saying that it was a tale told her by a very, very old Indian woman who was there when she first saw the place, and the Indian had heard it from her mother, and she from her mother, and she again from her mother, so the tale went so far back that whether it had truth in it or not none could tell. At that the young people said that, true or not, it was a good tale, and they were so politely insistent, especially a little girl who petted a blue-eyed kitten, that we heard the story which, so far as I know, has never yet been written, and were it not written now might be forgotten for ever. So here it is, and my daughters, Julia and Helen, like it better than any story in this book, though their brothers are in favour of the tale of the Noseless People.
Long ago, said the old woman, south of the Laguna Viedma lived a bruja, or kind of witch, a mean and wicked creature who had a house at the foot of the cordilleras built of great slabs of stone, in which there were three rooms. In one of these rooms she had imprisoned a boy and in another a girl, and the boy she allowed to roam about in the garden in the daytime but locked him up whenever the sun set, and the girl she locked up whenever the sun rose, so that the boy had never known night and the girl had never seen day, nor had the boy or the girl cast eyes on one another.
The boy, growing out of childhood, grew restless, and one day he dug a passage in his stone cell under the wall and up on the other side, much as a rabbit might have done, so that after being locked up he could spend a little time in the twilight, watching the dancing green stars that were fireflies. Still, whenever it grew dark and the edges of the things that he saw were no longer sharp, he scuttled back to his stone room, not knowing what clawed horror might unfold from the dark. For we must remember, said the old woman who told the tale, in all his life he had seen no human being but the witch, and knew no more of the moving world than the horses that we use know of the horses that drag a thousand noisy wheels in the city streets. Nor did he know of the ten thousand silver lights in the sky at night, nor of the bright glory of the Southern Cross.
One evening when the boy was in the vega, he having crawled through his passage, his heart fell when he saw a strange creature dressed in white, with long black hair and soft eyes. When the strange thing walked towards him he was startled, for he also saw the gray mist from which she came, and in that mist he seemed to see other thickening shapes. So, for a moment, he had a mind to kill the long-haired creature as an evil thing, and picked up a sharp stone, but his heart somehow bade him do otherwise, and he turned and fled, running straight to his hole by the side of the bush, then dropped to his knees without a backward look, scrambled to his cell and put a big flat stone over the hole, lest the long-haired one should follow and kill him. As for the girl, seeing the swift-running lad, she watched in surprise for a little, then followed, and coming to the hole in the ground shuddered with fear, believing that under the earth she trod lived thousands of such creatures that, perchance, roamed in the daytime and did evil.
The next day when the witch let the lad out after shutting the girl in her stone place, she was surprised to see fear in his eyes, for all that night he had lain awake in his dread of the long-haired one, trembling at every sound, lest the unknown should find the passage and creep through into his cell of safety.
All that day he worked hard, rolling a great boulder up from the valley so that he might close the outer opening of his burrow, but so heavy was the rock and so far the distance, that the sun set before he had rolled it to its place. Still, he moved it a long way and got it over his burrow and close to the bush. Then he sought the witch so that she might lock him up for the night, but to his grief she did not come, and this is why:
After she had unlocked the girl’s door that evening she remembered the look of fear that had been in the lad’s eyes, so went into his cell to see if anything harmful was there, and her foot struck the flat stone. Then she found the opening of the hole. Wondering greatly, she crawled into the passage, pushing hard because it was too small for her. At one place she had to remove much dirt above her head because the roof was so low, and pulling away a stone, down came a shower of little stones and of earth, then more and still more, until with a thundering noise the big boulder, which the lad had rolled and left, fell into the hole and very narrowly escaped the witch. So she was stuck fast, deep buried in the ground, her onward way blocked by the boulder against which she butted her head in vain. As for getting back by the way she had come, that was impossible, for, finding night coming on and no guardian witch, the boy fled to his cell. There he saw the black, uncovered hole and the flat rock he had placed over it, and listening he heard sounds in the tunnel. In his fear of the long-haired creature he pulled the flat rock over the hole again and on it piled rock upon rock. That done he gave a sigh of relief and straightened himself, but his heart sank when he saw in his cell the very thing that he most dreaded. For the girl, being brave in the dark and glad in the silence, sought a companion in her loneliness, and found the boy’s cell with its open door. But with the lad night brought fear. In the golden sunshine he met danger gladly enough, but in the soft moonlight when the true forms of things were lost, the world seemed baseless and dreamlike and unsubstantial. So, seeing the creature of the night in his cell, he threw up his arms and, not daring to look, fled into the garden and into the ghostly world.
The whispering stillness of what he saw made him tremble violently, for it was a dead world and not the world throbbing with the sweet song of friendly birds and the noise of busy insects. The green and gold of day had strangely gone and the brave hardness that he knew in his world was not in the sky, but instead, a soft black roof hung with strange lights. And even his feet were robbed of speed, and trees and bushes clawed him. As he fled he looked over his shoulder in affright because of the long-haired pursuer. Not far did he go before a creeping vine caught him about the ankle and his foot struck a root, so that he fell headlong, striking his head against a tree-trunk. The silver-sprinkled sky whirled wildly and then all went black.
He woke to the touch of delicate light hands bathing his face with cool water, but lay with fast-closed eyes, believing, hoping that it was a dream. Presently, though still faint and weary and in pain, he opened his eyes to see the face of the maiden as she bent over him, and the cloud of soft hair that rippled as silk grass ripples when touched by the breeze. As he looked, finding something gentle and kind in the face, he chanced to see the white moon, great and cold, rushing swiftly through an army of silver clouds. The sight was new and terrible and he grew dizzy and faint. Something evil seemed to have stolen the warmth from the sky so that the birds had died and the flowers withered.
With eyelids closed he wrestled with his fear and heard the golden voice of the girl saying again and again:
“Am I not your friend in this lonely place? Am I not your friend? Why then do you run from me?”
In spite of his fear he was wrapped in happiness at the words, for he knew that he had been long lonely, though he had not told himself so until then. Yet the darkness stretching wide and the stars and the shadows made him chill at heart, though like a true man he strove to master his fear. While he kept his eyes closed it was well enough, but to open them on the sunless world was pain. For all that, he nerved himself to speak.
“Yes. Let us go,” he said, “from this world of shadows,” and she, thinking that he meant the place of the witch, took his hand and said, “Yes. Let us go, my new-found friend.”
He rose to his feet then and said that he was ready, though he covered his eyes with his hand. Then she told him to wait, saying she knew of a hollow place in a tree in which was a flint the old witch had hidden, and the armadillo had told her there was some magic in it, though what that magic power was he did not know, except that it had the power to cut down trees. It would be well, she added, for them to take it with them.
Great was his loneliness while she was away, and though he opened his eyes once, all things were so strange and cold and silent that he closed them again. Once he heard the shrieking voice of the witch-woman under the ground and he wondered why the sound was so muffled. Had she, too, come near to death in the black world? Again he heard the voice of the owl, melancholy and solemn.
But his new-found friend came soon, to his joy, and she gave him the flint and took his hand to lead him, for he dared not open his eyes because of the moon, and she thought him sightless. So all that night they ran thus, hand in hand, over places where there were cruel sharp stones, across mist-blown swamps and pantano lands, and where the way was hard he carried the maiden, though he always kept his eyes closed and trusted to her guidance.
So the girl was strong and helpful to him until the dark began to pass, then, with the rose of dawn the lad cried joyfully, “I fear no more now and am strong again. Perhaps it is the magic of the flint that makes me so.”
But she said, “Alas! I fear that the stone we carry is not good but evil. Let us throw it away, for I grow weak and afraid and ill at ease. Greatly I fear the sky so hard and blue, my new-found friend.”
Hearing that, he laughed a little and called her his Golden One and bade her trust in him, so she was comforted a little, though still afraid. Then, as the rose and gold of sunrise sped across the sky and the thousand birds awoke and burst into song, his heart was full of happiness, but she, having heard no such noise before, wept with the utter pain of it, clapping her hands over her ears. Her eyes, too, were full of burning pain because of the growing flood of light. Still, she fought with her fear for a while, though she was sadly longing for the world with its friendly dark. But when the sun came up in his brilliancy and the boy greeted it with a great shout of joy, she was as one stunned and said:
“Alas! Go, dear lad, and leave me to die all parched and withered. For into the burning light I cannot go. My eyes are scorched and my brain is on fire. The sweet silence is no more and the heart of night is dead.”
At that sad speech the lad was full of grief lest he should lose his new-found friend, so he pulled from the trees light-green branches and wove them into a canopy and bound about her brow a veil of cool greenness, then lifting her in his arms, he went on happy in the singing sunshine, yet sad because she was white-faced and full of strange tremblings. At noon, when the heat of day was like brass and the sky was fierce with light, they came to a place of tender green coolness where was a vine-hung hollow in the mountainside, and there they rested awhile. The lad made for the maid a seat of matted leaves and mosses and brought to her berries and fruits and tender roots, and for drink, cool water in a leaf.
So at last came the light between day and night when neither was afraid, she brave at heart because of the passing of the burning light of day and he fearless because the night of sorrow had not yet come. Hand in hand they went towards a great plain all flower-spangled and smiling.
The witch they had forgotten, or thinking of her had supposed her to be fast in her own place. Yet it was not so, for deep in the burrow in which she had vainly tried to go back and as vainly tried to go forward she had her mind made up to escape by some means. With a mighty heave, for she was of great strength, she burst her way out of the ground and then stood, shaking the dirt out of her eyes and her ears and her hair. That done she sought the boy and the girl, but found no trace of them. At last the armadillo who always tells secrets, told her of what had happened, so she sought the magic flint, the terrible cutting flint which she could throw to kill. Finding it, too, gone, she was in mad rage, whirling, leaping, and screaming. Another moment and she left the place, going in mighty leaps, her bow and arrow in her hand, and soon from the top of a hill she saw the boy and girl as they stood looking at the smiling valley.
Now that valley was the valley of the huanacos wherein the witch was powerless, and that she well knew. Did the two once gain the shelter of the mountains, all her witcheries would be of no avail. Indeed, that very thing the sentinel huanaco was telling the children at the very moment the witch caught sight of them, and the animal bade them haste lest the witch touch them before they crossed the plain. So hand in hand boy and girl ran, and seeing them so near safety the witch went over the ground like a horse, bounding over bush and stone, taking five yards at each stride.
Then to help the children, from right and from left came huanacos, by tens and twenties and hundreds, their proud heads held high, their soft eyes full of loving kindness, and they ran by the side of the two who fled, and some formed in a body behind them so that the arrows shot by the witch could not touch boy or girl, though many a good huanaco laid down his life, thus shielding them.
Seeing the pass to which things had come, the old witch bethought her of another plan, and taking her magic arrow she shot it high in the air so that it passed over the herd of huanacos and fell to earth far in front of the boy and girl. As soon as the shaft touched the ground it split into a thousand pieces, each no thicker than spider silk, and each fragment took root and became a tree. In a single moment the whole plain was covered with a thick, solemn tangle of forest through which no living creature could hope to pass, and sadly enough, boy and girl turned to behold the witch coming toward them fast. But all about her feet were the animal friends of the boy and girl, foxes and small creatures, while about her head flew many tinamou-partridges, so that soon she was forced to slacken her pace. Then to boy and girl came a puma, smooth and beautiful, and it said, “El pedernal! El pedernal!” and they at once remembered the magic flint.
Taking the stone and poising it the lad threw with all his might. Through the air it hummed, and hearing the music of it the old witch gave a piercing yell, for well she knew its power. Straight toward the forest the stone flew, and before it trees fell to right and left as though the stone had been a great and keen axe handled by a giant, and the path it made was straight and open and clear, so that through the gap they saw the valley. Again the huanacos closed about the boy and girl so that nothing might harm them, and down through the straight opening they all went. Nor was that all. Having cut a way through the forest tangle the flint dropped and buried itself into the ground, boring down and down, until it fell into the lake of clear water that lies hidden under the ground. Out of the hole came bubbling a stream of water, silver and cool, and it flowed down the gap in the forest and passed out on the farther side, then split to run on both sides of the witch, to whom water was death. Deeper and deeper became the water until it covered the very colina on which she stood, and when at last the water touched her feet, she melted as sugar does.
“The stream,” said the old woman who told us the tale, “went on and on and became Laguna Viedma, and the forest is the forest you see. As for the boy and the girl, they became man and wife and lived in the place where we now sit for many, many years, and about them stayed many huanacos and deer and tinamou, and the sorry past was soon forgotten like a last year’s nest.”
* * *
Having said all that, the old woman, whose face was wrinkled and brown, drew a white woollen poncho over her shoulders and eyed me. After a while she said that she had told that tale to four men at different times and each of them had liked it so well that he had given her a dollar of silver.
“And,” said she with spirit, “I can show you the dollars to prove that what I say is true.” So getting up she went into the house and soon came out again with four silver coins, carrying them in her open palm. For a little while she was silent and so was I, and the men sitting around pretended to be inattentive and lit cigarettes and blew smoke rings, jangling their big spurs now and then. Presently the old woman said:
“Some day a brave caballero will hear the tale and he will make the four dollars to be five.”
Thinking it well to be counted brave, and hoping that I was a gentleman, I brought her expectations to pass, having a dollar with me, as luck had it. And certainly I think that the tale was worth a dollar, and if it was not, then it was worth many dollars to rest a while in that quiet place and to meet such worthy and simple folk.
