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 bad 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 anxious 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- 
