Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

He wished he had not used such confident, presumptuous words in writing to Blaine. From very early times men had believed that it was unwise, even impious, to tempt fate: the ancient generations were not to be despised. The confident system of his youth - universal reform, universal changes, universal happiness and freedom - had ended in something very like universal tyranny and oppression. The ancient generations were not to be despised; and the seamen's firm belief that Friday was unlucky was perhaps less foolish than the philosophe's conviction that all the days of the week could be rendered happy by the application of an enlightened system of laws. He wished the main conference had not been set for Friday.

Blushing at his momentary weakness, he turned his mind to Hurtado. The General might have some small absurdities such as a delight in being fine (he wore the stars of his three orders at all times) and setting an inordinate value on pedigree: he took more pleasure in recounting the stages of his descent, through his maternal grandmother, from Wilfred the Shaggy than in speaking of the four brilliant victories he had won as commander or the other battles in which he had served with such distinction. On all other subjects however he was not only a rational being but one with an unusually acute and ready mind: an active man, a born organizer, and an uncommonly effective ally in such a concern. His abilities, his known honesty, his high reputation in the army, and his influence throughout Peru made him the most valuable friend that ever Stephen could have found.

The white milestones filed by, and many crosses commemorating death by earthquake, murder, accident. For some little while the mule had not been pacing uphill with the same steady determination. He had been gazing from side to side; and now, giving Stephen a significant look, he turned off the road into the last carob-trees. By this point the road had wound some way from the Rimac, which could be heard roaring in the gorge below, but a small tributary stream ran through among the trees and in this Stephen and the mule drank heartily.

'You are a good honest creature, sure, and you bear an excellent character,' said Stephen, 'so I shall take off your saddle, confident you will not play the fool.'

The mule flung himself to the ground and rolled, waving his legs; and while Stephen sat under the lee of a carob's wall (each tree was surrounded by what looked like a well-head) grazed on what meagre herbage the grove could provide. Stephen ate bread and good Peruvian cheese with Peruvian wine; and in doing so he thought of the little girls, their apology the next day (Sarah: 'Sir, we are come to ask pardon for our wicked drunken folly.' Emily: 'For our wanton drunken folly.') and their words to Mr Wilkins, their voices piping alternately, clearly audible from below when Stephen had been chivvied right forward by Pullings and Mr Adams, who were bargaining with some merchants who wished to buy the Alastor: 'Yes, sir, and after Mass' - 'There was an organ: do you know what an organ is, sir?' - 'We went aboard a grand carriage drawn by mules with purple harness together with the Doctor and Father Panda'. 'There was a square with a lady on a column in the middle' -'The column was forty foot high' - 'And the lady was made of bronze' - 'She had a trumpet and water came out of it' - 'And it came out of eight lions' heads too' - 'Out of twelve lions' heads, booby' - 'It was surrounded by six huge enormous iron chains' - 'And four and twenty twelve-pounders' - 'The merchants paved two of the streets with silver ingots once' - 'They weighed ten pounds apiece' - 'About a foot long, four inches broad, and two or three inches deep.'

He had nearly finished his meal when he felt the mule's breath on the back of his neck: then the long, smooth, large-eyed face came down and delicately took the last piece of bread from his knee, a crust. 'You are a sort of tame mule, I find,' he said. And indeed the creature's gentleness, the kind way in which he stood to be saddled and his fine willing stride gave Stephen a higher opinion of his owner, the Vicar-General, an austere man in his ordinary dealings. The mule's name was Joselito.

Stephen mounted: out of the grove there was more wind now, more wind by far, right in their faces, and the road climbed, winding and for ever rising with tall, very tall, many branched columnal cactuses on either hand and little else apart from smaller cactuses with even crueller thorns. This was the first time in Stephen's life that he had ever ridden in a strange country paying so little attention to his surroundings; and although on occasion he had had a hand, even a directing hand, in matters of great importance, this was the first time that so much depended on his success, and the first time that the crisis, the decision, was drawing so near with such speed. He did not even notice two barefoot friars though the mule had been pointing his ears in their direction for a quarter of a mile until he was almost upon them and they standing on an outward corner, their beards streaming in the wind, looking back to the sound of hoofs. He pulled off his hat, called out a greeting and pushed on, hearing their 'Go with God' as he turned in yet another traverse, the road now high up on the steep side of the valley, with the stream a great way below.

He met a few small scattered groups, Indians coming down from the high pasture; and presently the road climbed to a saddle where the wind, a cold wind now, took them with great force. Before crossing it he steered Joselito into a less exposed hollow, where travellers before him had lighted fires, burning whatever little scrub they could find. Here, at what he judged to be some five thousand feet, he gave the mule his other loaf - no great sacrifice, since anxiety of a vague, diffused nature had eaten his own appetite - and put on the poncho, a simple garment with no sleeves, easier to manage than a cloak. The sky was still a fine light blue above them, unclouded here by dust; before him, when he turned, stretched the foothills and the plain, somewhat veiled, with the Rimac running through it to the immense Pacific, the coastline as clear as a map, and the island of San Lorenzo, beyond Callao, rising sharply from it, with the sun directly beyond, two hours from the somewhat blurred horizon. No ships in the offing that he could see, but below him on the road, no great way off, there was a party of horsemen, quite a large party, bound no doubt for the monastery of San Pedro or that of San Pablo, both of them in the mountains far ahead and both of them frequented for retreats, particularly by soldiers.

The poncho was a comfort; so was the way the road went down after they had crossed the saddle to a new valley with higher, farther mountains rising beyond, range after range. But this did not last long. Soon it began to rise once more and they climbed steadily mile after mile, sometimes so steeply that Stephen dismounted and walked beside the mule; and steadily the landscape grew more mineral.

'I wish I had paid more attention to geology,' said Stephen, for on his right hand on the far side of the gorge the bare mountainside showed a great band of red, brilliant in the declining sun against the grey rock below and the black above. 'Would that be porphyry, at all?'

On and on: up and always up. The air was thinner by now, and Joselito was breathing deep. Before they crossed the head of this valley they passed a man in a cloak whose horse had apparently both lost a shoe and picked up a stone: there was no telling, since he led his animal limping off the road and stood behind it, well out of hail. Of infinitely greater consequence was the prospect of yet another blessed downward stretch on the far side of the pass; yet here Stephen, if not the mule, was disappointed, for this before them was not the last valley but only the prelude to an even higher range; and still the road climbed.