We understood then; all those bobsledders took their sleds up by funicular and coasted down. We stopped there and got on our sled. The grade was very gradual at first, and we moved slowly—so slowly that a nice old lady who happened along gave us a push. We kept moving after that. We crossed a road, rounded a turn, leaped a railway track and struck into the straightway, going like a streak. We had thought it a good distance to the sharp turn, with its right-angle wall of ice, but we were there with unbelievable suddenness. Then in a second we were on the wall, standing straight out into space; then in another we had shot out of it; but our curve seemed to continue.
There was a little barnyard just there and an empty hay sled—placed there on purpose, I think now. At any rate, the owner was there watching the performance. I think he had been expecting us. When all motion ceased he untelescoped us, and we limped about and discussed with him in native terms how much we ought to pay for the broken runner on his hay sled, and minor damages. It took five francs to cure the broken runner, which I believe had been broken all the time and was just set there handy to catch inadvertent persons like ourselves. We finished our slide then and handed in our sled, which the old Frenchman looked at fondly and said: "Très bon—très vite." He did not know how nearly its speed had come to landing us in the newspapers.
We took the funicular to Son Loup, and at the top found ourselves in what seemed atmospheric milk. We stood at the hotel steps and watched the swift coasters pass. Every other moment they flashed by, from a white mystery above—a vision of faces, a call of voices—to the inclosing mystery again. It was like life; but not entirely, for they did not pass to silence. The long, winding hill far below was full of their calls'—muffled by the mist—their hoo-hoo-hoos of warning to those ahead and to those who followed. But it was suggestive, too. It was as if the lost were down there in that cold whiteness.
The fog grew thicker, more opaque, as the day waned. It was an impalpable wall. We followed the road from the hotel, still higher into its dense obscurity. When a tree grew near enough to the road for us to see it, we beheld an astonishing sight. The mist had gathered about the evergreen branches until they were draped, festooned, fairly clotted with pendulous frost embroidery.
We had been told that there was ski-ing up there and we were anxious to see it, but for a time we found only blankness and dead silence. Then at last—far and faint, but growing presently more distinct—we heard a light sound, a movement, a "swish-swish-swirl"—somewhere in the mist at our right, coming closer and closer, until it seemed right upon us, and strangely mysterious, there being no visible cause. We waited until a form appeared, no, grew, materialized from the intangible—so imperceptibly, so gradually, that at first we could not be sure of it. Then the outlines became definite, then distinct; an athletic fellow on skis maneuvered across the road, angled down the opposite slope, "swish-swish-swirl"—checking himself every other stroke, for the descent was steep—faded into unknown deeps below—the whiteness had shut him in. We listened while the swish-swish grew fainter, and in the gathering evening we felt that he had disappeared from the world into ravines of dark forests and cold enchantments from which there could be no escape.
We climbed higher and met dashing sleds now and then, but saw no other ski-ers that evening. Next morning, however, we found them up there, gliding about in that region of vapors, appearing and dissolving like cinema figures, their voices coming to us muffled and unreal in tone. I left the road and followed down into a sort of basin which seemed to be a favorite place for ski practice. I felt exactly as if I were in a ghostly aquarium.
I was not much taken with ski-ing, as a whole. I noticed that even the experts fell down a good many times and were not especially graceful getting up.
But I approve of coasting under the new conditions—i. e. with funicular assistance. In my day coasting was work—you had to tug and sweat up a long slippery incline for a very brief pleasure. Keats (I think it was Keats, or was it Carolyn Wells?) in his, or her, well-known and justly celebrated poem wrote:
It takes a long time to make the climb,
And a minute or less to come down;
But that poetry is out of date—in Switzerland. It no longer takes a long time to make the climb, and you do it in luxury. You sit in a comfortable seat and your sled is loaded on an especially built car. Switzerland is the most funiculated country in the world; its hills are full of these semi-perpendicular tracks. They make you shudder when you mount them for the first time, and I think I never should be able to discuss frivolous matters during an ascent, as I have seen some do. Still, one gets hardened, I suppose.