They say that men who know the sleep of exhaustion in the snow find no
awakening on the hither side of death.... The hours passed and the moon
sank down below the white world’s rim. Then, suddenly, there came a
little crash upon his breast and neck, and Hibbert--woke.
He slowly turned bewildered, heavy eyes upon the desolate mountains,
stared dizzily about him, tried to rise. At first his muscles would
not act; a numbing, aching pain possessed him. He uttered a long, thin
cry for help, and heard its faintness swallowed by the wind. And then
he understood vaguely why he was only warm--not dead. For this very
wind that took his cry had built up a sheltering mound of driven snow
against his body while he slept. Like a curving wave it ran beside him.
It was the breaking of its over-toppling edge that caused the crash,
and the coldness of the mass against his neck that woke him.
Dawn kissed the eastern sky; pale gleams of gold shot every peak with
splendour; but ice was in the air, and the dry and frozen snow blew
like powder from the surface of the slopes. He saw the points of his
ski projecting just below him. Then he--remembered. It seems he had
just strength enough to realise that, could he but rise and stand, he
might fly with terrific impetus towards the woods and village far
beneath. The ski would carry him. But if he failed and fell...!
How he contrived it Hibbert never knew; this fear of death somehow
called out his whole available reserve force. He rose slowly, balanced
a moment, then, taking the angle of an immense zigzag, started down the
awful slopes like an arrow from a bow. And automatically the splendid
muscles of the practised ski-er and athlete saved and guided him, for
he was hardly conscious of controlling either speed or direction. The
snow stung face and eyes like fine steel shot; ridge after ridge flew
past; the summits raced across the sky; the valley leaped up with
bounds to meet him. He scarcely felt the ground beneath his feet as
the huge slopes and distance melted before the lightning speed of that
descent from death to life.
He took it in four mile-long zigzags, and it was the turning at each
corner that nearly finished him, for then the strain of balancing taxed
to the verge of collapse the remnants of his strength.
Slopes that have taken hours to climb can be descended in a short
half-hour on ski, but Hibbert had lost all count of time. Quite other
thoughts and feelings mastered him in that wild, swift dropping through
the air that was like the flight of a bird. For ever close upon his
heels came following forms and voices with the whirling snow-dust.
He heard that little silvery voice of death and laughter at his
back. Shrill and wild, with the whistling of the wind past his ears,
he caught its pursuing tones; but in anger now, no longer soft and
coaxing. And it was accompanied; she did not follow alone. It seemed a
host of these flying figures of the snow chased madly just behind him.
He felt them furiously smite his neck and cheeks, snatch at his hands
and try to entangle his feet and ski in drifts. His eyes they blinded,
and they caught his breath away.
The terror of the heights and snow and winter desolation urged him
forward in the maddest race with death a human being ever knew; and
so terrific was the speed that before the gold and crimson had left
the summits to touch the ice-lips of the lower glaciers, he saw the
friendly forest far beneath swing up and welcome him.
And it was then, moving slowly along the edge of the woods, he saw a
light. A man was carrying it. A procession of human figures was passing
in a dark line laboriously through the snow. And--he heard the sound of
chanting.
Instinctively, without a second’s hesitation, he changed his course. No
longer flying at an angle as before, he pointed his ski straight down
the mountain-side. The dreadful steepness did not frighten him. He knew
full well it meant a crashing tumble at the bottom, but he also knew it
meant a doubling of his speed--with safety at the end. For, though no
definite thought passed through his mind, he understood that it was the
village _curé_ who carried that little gleaming lantern in the dawn,
and that he was taking the Host to a châlet on the lower slopes--to
some peasant _in extremis_. He remembered her terror of the church and
bells. She feared the holy symbols.
There was one last wild cry in his ears as he started, a shriek of
the wind before his face, and a rush of stinging snow against closed
eyelids--and then he dropped through empty space. Speed took sight from
him. It seemed he flew off the surface of the world.
* * * * *
Indistinctly he recalls the murmur of men’s voices, the touch of strong
arms that lifted him, and the shooting pains as the ski were unfastened
from the twisted ankle ... for when he opened his eyes again to normal
life he found himself lying in his bed at the post office with the
doctor at his side. But for years to come the story of ‘mad Hibbert’s’
ski-ing at night is recounted in that mountain village. He went, it
seems, up slopes, and to a height that no man in his senses ever tried
before. The tourists were agog about it for the rest of the season, and
the very same day two of the bolder men went over the actual ground
and photographed the slopes. Later Hibbert saw these photographs. He
noticed one curious thing about them--though he did not mention it to
any one:
There was only a single track.