This subversion of all that was right, and the shame of promising birds and beasts that did not appear, made Eduardo as nearly morose as his cheerful, sanguine nature would allow, and for part of the afternoon they rode in silence. During this long stretch, when the faint track rose steadily through broken rocky country towards a far high rounded crest, the train moved on with barely a sound. The Indians, whose high-arched noses and large dark eyes made them look quite like their llamas, talked little, and that in low voices: during all this time Stephen had not been able to establish human relations with a single one of them, any more than he had with their animals, and this in spite of the fact that they were together day and night, since Eduardo kept to remote trails far from all towns and frequented roads, the llamas carrying everything needed for their journey. It is true that they had seen two very long caravans carrying ore down from the isolated mines right up just under the snow-line, but these only accentuated their loneliness, not unlike that of a ship in mid-ocean. One slight consolation was that by now only a few of the more froward llamas spat at him. Up and up: up and up: with his eyes fixed, unseeing, on the gravelly soil and thin grass of the track as it flowed steadily beneath his larboard stirrup (a great hollowed block of wood) Stephen's mind floated off ten thousand miles to Diana and Brigit. How did they do? Was it right in a man to marry and then to sail off to the far side of the world for years on end?
An Aymara Indian of a superior kind with a red worsted cap struck him sharply on the knee, speaking in a severe, disapproving tone and pointing. 'Don Esteban,' called Eduardo again from some little way ahead, 'we are almost on the edge of the puna. If you would like to dismount I believe I could really show you something this time.'
Stephen looked up. Immediately ahead was a low red cliff and on its top the rounded crest towards which they had been travelling so long, now suddenly quite close. They must have mounted another two or three thousand feet, he reflected, taking notice of the still thinner air, the sharper cold. 'We will join them round the next bend,' said Eduardo, leading him towards a shaley path up the cliff while the llamas carried on along the trail, quite broad and distinct at this point.
'This was no doubt a mine,' observed Eduardo, pointing to a tunnel and a spoil-heap. 'Or an attempt at a mine.' Stephen nodded. They had passed no mountain, however bare, remote, waterless and inaccessible, without the mark of men having been there, searching for gold, silver, copper, cinnabar or even tin. He said nothing. His heart was already beating so as to fill his bosom, leaving no room for breath. He reached the top, but only just, and stood there controlling or trying to control his violent gasps while Eduardo named the great shining snowy peaks that soared on either hand and in front, all rising like islands from an orange belt of cloud, one behind the other, brilliant in the cold transparent air. 'Now,' he said, turning to Stephen, 'I believe I shall take your breath away.'
Stephen gave a weak, mechanical smile and followed him carefully over the tufts of coarse yellow grass. Trees had been left behind long, long ago, and here there was not even a hint of a bush, not even of a prostrate bush, only the near-sterility of ichu grass stretching away and away for ever over this high stark plateau. The ground looked flat but in fact it rose and fell, and pausing by a rocky outcrop Eduardo gave Stephen a significant, triumphant look. Stephen, half blind by now, followed his gaze down the slope and to his utter amazement he saw a scattered grove of what for a moment he took to be thick-stemmed palm-trees about fifteen feet high: but some of them had a great solid spike rising as much again above the palm-like crown.
He ran unsteadily to the nearest. The leaves were like those of an agave, fierce-pointed and with hooked thorns all along their sides: the great spike was an ordered mass of close-packed flowers, pale yellow, thousands and thousands of them. 'Mother of God,' he said. And after a while, 'It is a bromeliad.'
'Yes, sir,' said Eduardo, delighted, proprietorial. 'We call it a puya.'
'Ruiz did not know it. Nowhere is it described, still less figured in the Flora Peruvianae et Chilensis. What would Linnaeus have made of such a plant? Oh, oh!' he cried, for there, as incongruous in this severity as the bromeliad, flew or rather darted minute green hummingbirds, hovering at an open flower, sipping its honey, flashing on to the next, taking no notice of him whatsoever.
A week later and two thousand feet higher Stephen and Eduardo walked out across the flank of a quiescent volcano at a fine brisk pace: on the left hand a chaos of rocks, some enormous; on the right a vast sweep of volcanic ash, old settled ash, now just blushing green from a recent shower. They were carrying their guns, for in the puna beyond this chaos there was a possibility of Eduardo's partridges; but their main purpose was to contemplate a lofty rock-face with an inaccessible ledge upon which the condor had nested in the past and might well be nesting now.
They threaded the chaos, and although the north-facing boulders were coated with old ice they found several interesting plants among them as well as some droppings that Eduardo pointed out as being those of a vicuna.
'How do they differ from those of a guanaco?' asked Stephen.
'Apart from the fact that they lie separately rather than in a family heap, I should find it difficult to say,' replied Eduardo.
'But if you were to see the two side by side you would distinguish them at once. This is low for a vicuna, however; he must have come down for the fresh green on the other side.'
'Perhaps we may get a shot at him,' said Stephen. 'You yourself said that you were tired of fried guinea-pig and ham.'
'So I did,' said Eduardo, and then, hesitantly, 'But, dear don Esteban, it would grieve me if you were to kill him. The Incas have always protected the vicuna and even the Spaniards leave him alone in general. My followers would take it very ill.'
'Sure, he is safe from me. Yet my best poncho is made from vicuna's wool.'
'Certainly. They are killed from time to time, and by certain people... There is our condor.'
There he was indeed, black in a dark blue sky, wheeling towards his still-distant cliff. They watched him out of sight. Stephen did not return to the vicuna: Eduardo was embarrassed and there was obviously some question of the old ways here. He and his followers were no doubt practising Catholics, but this did not prevent them from dipping one finger in their cup and holding it up to thank the sun before drinking, as their ancestors had done time out of mind; and there were other ceremonies of the same nature. 'As you know,' said Eduardo, 'the chick cannot fly until his second year; so if he is there, and if the light is what I could wish, we may see him peering over the edge.'
'Could we not climb up and look down on him?'
'Heavens, no,' cried Eduardo. 'We should never get down before sunset; and it is terrible to be caught by night on the puna. Do but think of the terrible evening winds, the terrible morning winds, and the wicked cold - nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no shelter at all.'
