24 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



tensely dark. My wounded leg had become inflamed 

 and pained a great deal, but the bleeding continued 

 until the handkerchiefs we had bound round it were 

 saturated. I was fully dressed, and as the night 

 grew chilly I pulled my big cloth poncho, that had a 

 soft fluffy lining, over me for warmth. I soon gave 

 up expecting my friend, and knew that there would 

 be no relief until morning. But I could neither 

 doze nor think, and could only listen. From my 

 experience during those black ainxious hours I can 

 imagine how much the sense of hearing must be to 

 the blind and to animals that exist in dark caves, 

 At length, about midnight, I was startled by a 

 slight curious sound in the intense silence and dark- 

 ness. It was in the cabin and close to me. I 

 thought at first it was like the sound made by a 

 rope drawn slowly over the clay floor. I lighted a 

 wax match, but the sound had ceased, and I saw 

 nothing. After awhile I heard it again, but it now 

 seemed to be out of doors and going round the hut, 

 and I paid little attention to it. It soon ceased, 

 and I heard it no more. So silent and dark was it 

 thereafter that the hut I reposed in might have 

 been a roomy coffin in which I had been buried 

 a hundred feet beneath the surface of the earth. Yet 

 I was no longer alone, if I had only known it, but 

 had now a messmate and bedfellow who had subtly 

 crept in to share the warmth of the cloak and of my 

 person one with a broad arrow-shaped head, set 

 with round lidless eyes like polished yellow pebbles, 

 and a long smooth limbless body, strangely seg- 



