Patrick O'Brian - The Wine-Dark Sea

So it did, but only, as far as Stephen was concerned, at the cost of much gasping and great concentration as he led his horse up the cruel shaley track, keeping up with Eduardo's elastic step as well as he could but necessarily losing his explanation of several small birds and plants and a lizard. Beetles crossed the path unexamined, uncollected. As they climbed they were under the lee of the eastern wall: they could hear the wind high overhead but they felt no more than the occasional eddy; and in the still thin clear air the sun beat down. Whenever Eduardo found that he had drawn more than a few yards ahead he paused to cough or blow his nose; and this was the first time Stephen had ever known consideration for his age cause a young man to check his pace. He took another ball of coca-leaves, bent his head and watched his feet. Although his words to Gayongos had been perfectly sound, the wretched Dutourd would thrust his way up into some level of Stephen's mind just below full consciousness, an unreasonable haunting anxiety. Physical exertions helped; the coca-leaves had their usual charming effect; but it was not until a great gust struck him that he realized they were at the top and that the anxiety gave way to a lively interest in the present.

'Here we are,' cried Eduardo. And there they were indeed: massy stone buildings on yet another high plateau, corrals, distant herds, an Indian girl mounted on a llama who threw herself off and came running to kiss Eduardo's knee.

Stephen was led to a respectable barn, seated on a faggot covered with a herb related to lady's bedstraw, and handed a gourd of mate with a silver tube. The Indians were perfectly civil and obliging, but they had no smile for him: this had been the case with all the few Indians he had met: a gloomy nation by all appearances, unsocial, quite withdrawn. It was therefore with some amazement that he observed their delight in Eduardo's presence, their cheerfulness, and even, in spite of their profound respect, their laughter, which he had never heard before. Eduardo spoke to them only in Quichua, which came trippingly off his tongue: he had apologized to Stephen beforehand, saying that most of them did not know Spanish and that some of those who did preferred to conceal their knowledge.

Now, however, turning to Stephen he said in that language, 'Sir, allow me to show you a guanaco in the field outside. He is the wild ancestor of the llama, as you will recall, but this one was caught young, and now he is quite tame.'

'A fine animal,' said Stephen, looking at the slim elegant fawn-coloured white-bellied creature, which held its long neck high and returned his gaze quite fearlessly. 'About twelve hands, I believe.'

'Twelve hands exactly, sir. And here, coming up the path, is our best llama: his name in Quichua means spotless snow.'

'An even finer animal,' said Stephen, turning to watch the llama walk delicately up the path with an Indian boy, balancing its head delicately from side to side. He had barely fixed his attention upon the llama, estimating its height and weight, before the guanaco, gathering itself, bounded forward with both front knees bent and struck him a little below the shoulder-blades, sending him flat on his face.

In the general outcry while Stephen was picked up and dusted and the guanaco led away by the ears, the llama stood unmoved, looking scornful.

'Mother of God," cried Eduardo, 'I am so sorry, so ashamed.'

'It is nothing, nothing at all,' said Stephen. 'A childish tumble on the grass, no more. Let us ask the llama how he does.'

The llama stood his ground as they approached, eyeing Stephen with much the same look as the guanaco, and when he was well within range, spat in his face. The aim was perfect, the saliva extraordinarily copious.

Outcry and hullabaloo again, but only Eduardo seemed really deeply moved and as Stephen was being washed and wiped he saw two Indian children in the far background fairly twisting themselves double with delight.

'What can I say?' asked Eduardo. 'I am desolated, desolated. It is true they sometimes do that to people who vex them, and sometimes to white men who do not. I should have thought of it... but after we had been talking for a while I forgot your colour.'

'May I beg for some mate?' asked Stephen. 'That most refreshing drink.'

'Instantly, instantly,' cried Eduardo, and coming back with the gourd he said, 'Just beyond that small sharp peak is where we keep the alpacas. From there one can sometimes see a band of vicunas, and quite often too the small fluttering rock-creeper we call a pito; it is no great way, and I had hoped to carry you up there, but now I am afraid it is too late. And perhaps you have had enough of llamas and their kind.'

'Not at all, not at all,' cried Stephen. 'But it is true that I must not be late at the convent.'

Going down, Eduardo grew sadder as they lost height: his spirits declined with the slope of the path, and as they rested among the shattered boulders of another gigantic rock-fall, the result of the most recent earthquake and barely lichened yet, Stephen, to divert his mind, said, 'I was pleased to see your people so happy and gay. I had formed a false notion from my trifling experience in and about Lima, supposing them to be almost morose.'

'A people that has had its ancient laws and customs taken from it, whose language and history count for nothing, and whose temples have been sacked and thrown down is apt to be morose,' replied Eduardo: then, recollecting himself, 'I do not say that this is the state of affairs in Peru; and it would be the grossest heresy to deny the benefits of the true religion: I say only that this is what some of the more obstinate Indians, who may secretly practise the old sacrifices, believe; and - pray do not move,' he said in a low urgent voice, nodding towards the far side of the valley, there where the terraces and fields ran down to the stream. Against the mountain a band of condors were circling, rising, but to no great height; and as Stephen watched, three of them perched on convenient rocks.

'If you train your little spyglass on the edge of the barley, halfway down,' said Eduardo in little more than a whisper, 'you will see the stray sheep, ha, ha.' Stephen rested the glass in a crack between two rocks, brought the edge of the field into focus, travelled down to a patch of white: but there was a tawny puma covering most of it, slowly eating mutton.

'They often do that,' murmured Eduardo. 'The condors come quite soon after he has killed his prey - they seem to watch him as he travels - and wait until he is gorged. Then he creeps off into shelter and they come down; but he cannot bear seeing them at it - he rushes out - they rise - he eats a little more - retires - and they return. There. He is going off already."

'Our vultures are more circumspect,' said Stephen. 'They will wait for hours, whereas these are in directly. Lord, how they eat! I should not have missed this for the world. Thank you, my dear Eduardo, for showing me the puma, that noble beast.'

Riding back they discussed the whole event in minute detail -the exact angle and splay of the condors' primaries as they settled on a crag, the movement of their tails, the dissatisfied look on the puma's face when it came back for the third time to nothing but a heap of the larger bones. Having talked themselves hoarse, almost shouting over the declining but still powerful wind, they reached the monastery in reasonable time. Here they supped with a numerous company in the main refectory and Stephen retired to his cell as soon as grace was said. He had not eaten much, he had drunk less, and now (another usual consequence of ingesting coca) he lay unsleeping, but not unhappy with it, his mind running over the day just past, regretting the untimely though surely unimportant Dutourd but taking much pleasure in the rest. At the same time he followed the chanting of the monks. This particular Benedictine house was unusually rigorous, separating mattins from lauds, singing the first at midnight, a very long service indeed with the full nocturn, lessons and Te Deum, and the second so that its middle psalm coincided with the rising of the sun.