_Canton des Grisons, Feb. 10._
For the neighbourhood it is a sultry day; glass up to 5° Fahrenheit
and a taint of scirocco, or _föhn_, as the facetious native calls this
wind. My toboggan lies idle by stress of drifting snow. "No chance," I
say, "of doing a record this afternoon!" This is what I say openly and
pompously to my fellows. With my own dear heart I commune otherwise,
saying how heaven should be praised for this one blessed day's recess
from broken scalp.
If I have asked myself once (as is proper with an enigma) I have asked
myself a thousand times, "Why did I come out here, to this resort of
invalids and polar athletes?" My right lung is flawless: my left is
very perfect. On the other hand I do not show well on ice; my legs are
ill-shaped for bandy; curling I find to be but poor sport after
skittles; and I have met one wayfarer only, and that a fool, who did
not laugh upon my figure-skating.
In a climate where one must either do or suffer something to justify
one's existence, there remained this sole thing--to toboggan. I said,
"I will surely toboggan!"
"Good!" they said; "but on an instrument of what sort? 'Swiss' for
women and children; ordinary 'Americas' for men; 'Skeleton Americas'
for heroes."
"I will choose the last," I said; for if I do anything at all I like
to do it passing well, and with the best of tools.
There was no lack of willing teachers to illustrate for me the true
posture--_ventre à terre_, and to show me how I should go armed as to
my Alpine boots with spiked rakes screwed to the forefront of my sole
for the better negotiation of sharp angles on the side of a ravine.
One may add that if a pine-tree, or a telegraph post, or an ascending
hay-sleigh opposes your career, you learn by the simple interposition
of your head to save the delicate machinery of the toboggan from
brutalization. It may be that by inadvertence you have attained an
impetus so terrific that you overtake a walking horse in possession of
the path. Once again your headpiece will protect the instrument from
the fiery choler of the beast's hind hoof. After some two miles of
fortuitous descent, diversified by such checks as I have here shadowed
forth, you will be rounding the final corner at a pointed angle of
45°, travelling perhaps several miles per hour, when a large beer-cart
with an upward tendency will dispute the road. Then the banked snow
shall be your pall, and your _requiescat_ shall be rendered by the
local teamster in German of a bastard order.
Nor is this all. To the beetling edge of the descent you will first
have been conveyed by an impetuous _zwei-spänner_, thoughtlessly gay
with bells and feathers. Twenty-five candidates having urged their
claims for the five seats, some will have need to be content to trail
behind on their toboggans. As one wanting in experience, you will have
the last place assigned to you, or else the last but one, with a
casual riderless machine at the tail-end to give you an unholy spasm
as it swings off the track round the corners. At intervals, while your
pensive mind is absorbed upon the maintenance of a happy equilibrium,
rendered strangely-difficult by the ruthless speed of the sleigh, some
two or perhaps three of the tailing-party will fall off in front. The
sharp contact of several raked boots with your open countenance draws
your attention to the altered condition of things. Over the mangled
bodies of friend and foe you are carried forward. The sleigh is
tardily arrested, and your innocent head becomes the recipient of
fearless abuse.
Or again, from some mountain-hut upon the route issues forth a gross
and even elephantine dog, born of unhallowed union between a wolfhound
and an evilly-bred St. Bernard. Foiled in his attack upon the head of
the caravan he revenges himself upon the outstretched leg of the
hindmost. The lacerated calf will be your own.
This is well enough in open daylight, and when you are swathed in
buskins from heel to hip, and your rakes are good for retaliation. But
in doubtful moonlight with the air at 15° below zero, as you toboggan
back to your hostelry in the valley from a fancy dress ball, where you
have simulated _Hamlet_ in black silk tights and pumps, the humour
lies purely on the side of the dog.
But apart from the lower animal nature, in this barbaric sport you are
never confident of your dearest friends. Thus, we had been a pleasant
and hilarious party at the international _bal masqué:_ the ardour of
the stirrup-cup was still upon us as we attained the brow of the
decline. By a happy inspiration I had proposed that my friend Mr.
STARK MUNRO, being a heavy-weight and disguised as a _Völsunga Saga_,
should proceed in the van to clear any incidental drift or desultory
avalanche. He disappeared headlong down the pine-forest track followed
by the Ace of Clubs, a Sardinian Brigand, and a Tonsured Benedictine.
All the costumes gained in picturesqueness from the Arctic background.
The New Woman of the party, attired as Good Queen BESS, begged me to
precede her, arguing that I should go faster on my Skeleton than she
on her Swiss. I engaged to do so on the understanding that she should
allow me seven minutes' start in case of eventualities, the course
being usually done in some 5-3/4 minutes under happy conditions. She
was to be succeeded by Antigone, the Spirit of the Engadine and the
Mother of the Gracchi.
I do not greatly care to linger over the details of my descent. I had
started gaily humming those Elizabethan lines, "Fain would I climb,
but that I fear to fall,"--out of pure gallantry to Good Queen BESS
who had given me a dainty little cow-bell as a favour at the
_cotillon;_ and I had been travelling cautiously for 8-1/2 minutes,
with my nose, no fewer than six fingers, and all the toes on each foot
frostbitten, and a half-moon piece already gone out of my calf at the
spot where it had attracted the notice of the St. Bernard wolf-hound,
when, even as I was navigating a rotten bridge at a sharp turn, I
heard a rushing sound out of the night behind me, and "_Achtung!_"
(the terrible warning-note of the tobogganer) rang in my stricken ear.
I had barely time to throw a backward glance of horror and
deprecation, when the projecting feet of Good Queen BESS, her toboggan
and her spiked steering-pegs were upon me.
The bridge had never been strong in point of bulwarks; the torrent
which it spans is rapid and fed from icy heights; its banks do not
lend themselves to debarkation.
* * *
When I recovered consciousness by force of exquisitely painful
restoratives applied by the _Völsunga Saga_, the Mother of the Gracchi
and Good Queen BESS (herself unscratched, though the plush of her
toboggan was tarnished with my gore). I was solemnly intoning, "World
without end: _Achtung!_" with all the conviction of a cathedral tenor.
I am going home the day after to-morrow.
* * * * *
SUGGESTION.--A certain restaurant not a hundred miles away from the
St. James's Theatre advertises, among other attractions, "_Dîner Salon
Gobelin, 7s. 6d._" But wouldn't it be more appropriate to spell the
last word "Gobbling"?
* * * * *