Tierra del Fuego Read Online Free PDF

away.
    Within a few weeks, the area had been completely dug up, the earth moved, and the bones pulled apart vertebra by vertebra. There was not a handful of sand or gravel that had not been sifted through the pans. One evening, as they finished their work, Novak said, “I’m getting out of here. There’s nothing more to be had.”
    â€œYou’re right,” Schaeffer said. “There’s nothing more.”
    They both stood there for a while, looking with surprise at all the gravel and sand they had dug up and at the heavy whale bones they had taken to pieces and moved.
    â€œWe turned over almost the entire beach!” was Schaeffer’s final comment, before they walked away.
    That same evening, in the cave, they weighed all the gold they had obtained.
    â€œThere must be nearly a kilo!” Schaeffer exclaimed, feeling the weight of his leather bag in his hand, his eyes shining with greed.
    â€œNot bad at all,” Novak said, depositing his own bag under the guanaco and seal skins he used as blankets.
    Meanwhile, Schaeffer put his bag in one of the large pockets of his leather coat, and casually walked out through the tent of whalebones and sealskins.
    Schaeffer always did the same after they had divided up the gold at the end of a day’s work. He would leave the cave, linger on the pampa for a while, then come back, take the dark leather bag from the pocket of his coat and throw it down ostentatiously on his blankets, the ends of which overlapped Novak’s in the narrow cavern under the rock.
    The wild geese and bustards had already started to gather in large groups on the flat grasslands. One morning, both men watched with a certain dismay as one of the female birds suddenly rose and, forming a great triangle, with three males at the front to guide her, set off on her migratory flight to other distant regions. She had already raised her chicks in the tussock grasslands and was taking them with her, her instinct having told her that the first autumn blizzards were approaching.
    â€œNow that the geese are going we should go, too!” Novak said.
    â€œWhere would you go?” Schaeffer asked coldly.
    â€œSame place they’re going. North. That’s where life is.”
    â€œBut this is where they come to find it,” the old man said, looking down at the ground and smiling.
    â€œI’ll cross the Straits of Magellan and take the first ship that leaves Punta Arenas. Doesn’t matter where it’s going, as long as it’s north.”
    Schaeffer sighed. “Me, I’m going to Río Grande. I want to get off this island, too. I’ve done all I can here.”
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    A heavy silence fell over the two men on the eve of their departure. They sat down together by the fire, the way they had once done, and ate roast guanaco jerky and drank mate . It had been a while since they had last had any goose or seagull eggs. Something had come between them, something that would not let them talk, or even sit closer together. The fire was a meager one, more ash than coal, made from black scrub, a useless bush with weak, hollow branches and a dry heart as porous as cork, which somehow survives in the Fuegian wasteland.
    As twilight fell, they went back inside the stone cave in silence, as they did every night. The old man was soon snoring peacefully, but Novak could not get to sleep.
    Dark thoughts started crowding into his mind. They came and went, and each time they returned they were darker still. To dismiss them, he thought back over the steps that had led him to this remote corner of the planet. He remembered them as all men do when they lie awake in the dark, groping about uncertainly in the past and occasionally catching glimpses of the hidden reasons that have led them here to roam the dense sea of forgetfulness.
    He had come from Europe as an artillery sergeant, entrusted with a battery, a product of Krupp’s, intended to compete with Schneider and