My wife had screwed up the machine in the knapsack more than usual, and walking seemed scarcely any effort at all. I carried a long alpenstock, and when we reached the mountain and began the ascent, I found that with the help of this and my knapsack I could go uphill at a wonderful rate. My companion had taken the lead, so as to show me how to climb. Making a détour over some rocks, I quickly passed him and went ahead. After that it was impossible for him to keep up with me. I ran up steep places, I cut off the windings of the path by lightly clambering over rocks, and even when I followed the beaten track my step was as rapid as if I had been walking on level ground.
“Look here!” shouted the Alpine Club man from below, “you’ll kill yourself if you go at that rate! That’s no way to climb mountains.”
“It’s my way!” I cried. And on I skipped.
Twenty minutes after I arrived at the summit my companion joined me, puffing, and wiping his red face with his handkerchief.
“Confound it!” he cried, “I never came up a mountain so fast in my life.”
“You need not have hurried,” I said, coolly.
“I was afraid something would happen to you,” he growled, “and I wanted to stop you. I never saw a person climb in such an utterly absurd way.”
“I don’t see why you should call it absurd,” I said, smiling with an air of superiority. “I arrived here in a perfectly comfortable condition, neither heated nor wearied.”
He made no answer, but walked off to a little distance, fanning himself with his hat and growling words which I did not catch. After a time I proposed to descend.
“You must be careful as you go down,” he said. “It is much more dangerous to go down steep places than to climb up.”