Loading in the environs of Barbara Bay, Cape Horn, I was surprised, with two companions, by the Patagonians, and made prisoner. I had the pain of witnessing from the cliffs the departure of the whaler on board of which I had entered at Havre as harpooner.
It was with a deep pang of grief, and eyes bathed in tears, I saw the white sails of my ship disappear on the horizon, and the sea become solitary once more.
I little suspected that the vessel I then saw for the last time was doomed to some terrible fate. Nothing was ever heard of her again.
Two hours later, stripped of our clothes and tied by the wrists to the tails of Patagonian horses, we were carried off into the interior of the country.
The Patagonians, with regard to whom travellers relate so many fables, are neither so gigantic nor so evil as generally represented.
They are sturdily independent. The least yoke galls them, and rather than submit to the will of a chief, they rush off into exile, and submit to the most terrible privations.
We were not ill-used by our captors, but I was at length alone. One of my companions went raving mad, the other committed suicide. I was kept alive, I believe, by the spirit of hope.
I was twenty years of age, and had a constitution of iron, as well as a buoyancy of spirits, a boldness and firmness, which saved me from myself, by permitting me to look upon my position in its true light. Cruel as it was, it was far from being desperate.
My first care was, by invariable complaisance, to secure the goodwill of the savages, in which I succeeded pretty well, more easily, indeed, than I should have dared to hope.
However, when in the evening after a whole day's journey in the interminable steppes of Patagonia, I threw myself, overcome with fatigue, before the bivouac fire, while the savages laughed and sang among themselves, I often felt my heart on the point of bursting by reason of the efforts I made to suppress my sighs.
How many times have I felt my courage fail! How many times has the thought of suicide burst upon my mind! But, always at the most critical moment, the hope of deliverance arose to put new life into my heart; my sufferings were calmed little by little, my frame ceased to be agitated, and I slept, murmuring in a gentle voice one of those national refrains which are, for the exile, a sweet and far-off echo of the absent country.
Fourteen months thus passed away, hour by hour, second by second, in an incessant and frightful torture.
Always on the watch to seize an opportunity of escaping, but not wishing to leave anything to the risk of failure, I had had the greatest care not to awaken the drowsy mistrust of the Patagonians. I always affected, on the contrary, not to wander too far from the tribe; so the Indians had at last come to allow me to enjoy comparative liberty amongst them; and instead of compelling me to follow them on foot, they decided of their own accord to allow me to mount on horseback.
It was only on horseback that I could dream of escaping.
The Patagonians are some of the first horsemen in the world. In their school I made rapid progress; and, however wild and vicious might be the horse that they gave me, in a few minutes I subdued him, and made myself completely his master.
Our wandering and purposeless journeys conducted us at last to about ten leagues from the Carmen of Patagonia, the most advanced fort constructed by the Spaniards on the Río Negro, at the extreme frontier of their former possessions.
The troop camped for the night at a little distance from the river, near an abandoned farm.
The opportunity for which I had waited so long had come at last. I prepared to profit by it, convinced that if I did not escape now, I should die a slave.
I will not fatigue the reader with the details of my flight; I will content myself with simply saying that after a devious journey, which lasted seven hours, and during which I constantly felt the smoking nostrils of the horses on my track, on the croup of the one I rode; after having escaped twenty times by a miracle from the bolas which the Patagonians threw at me, and from the sharpened points of their long lances, I came unexpectedly upon a patrol of Buenos Airean horsemen, in the midst of whom I fell fainting, overcome by fatigue and excitement.
The Patagonians, suddenly taken aback by the appearance of white men, whom the high grass had hidden from them till that time, turned tail with fright, and fled away, howling with fury.
