16 The Wine-Dark Sea - Libro della tutto

Patrick O'Brian The Wine-Dark Sea
they had caught up with the llamas not indeed
empty-handed, since Stephen carried a beetle
or a low-growing plant for the pack of the
animal that carried their collections, but without
any sort of game, which meant that their
supper would be fried guinea-pig and dried
potatoes once more; and each time Eduardo
had said that this was a strange, unaccountable
year, with weather that made no sense
and with animals abandoning customs and
territories that had remained unchanged since
before the days of Pachacutic Inca. To prove
his point on the third occasion he led Stephen
to a heap of dung, wonderfully unexpected
and even homely in so desolate a landscape,
a heap six feet across and several inches high
in spite of weathering. Stephen looked at it attentively
– ruminants' droppings without a
doubt – and Eduardo told him that guanacos
always came to the same place to defecate,