16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
down, but very much more up than down,
Stephen was of opinion that his head and
lungs had adapted themselves to the thin air
of the mountains. He had, after all, walked
and ridden all day from their last night's resting-place,
rising through the high alpine pastures
to perhaps nine thousand feet without
discomfort. Admittedly he could not have kept
up, hour after hour, with the deep-chested Indians
– several of them Aymaras from Eduardo's
native Cuzco – who led the train of
pack-llamas up the interminable slopes, many
of them so desperately barren; yet when he
dismounted and walked out with Eduardo over
some promising stretch of country he did so as
nimbly as if he were treading the Curragh of
Kildare.
Three times that day, and at ever-increasing
heights, they had left their mules in the hope
of a partridge or a guanaco, and three times