We might see a coach rolling back upon us next. The driver explained that the summit of the Pass was but a mile or two ahead; that the fourth horse was not needed in the descent and was accordingly released from each diligence at the post-house at the top, and sent home by himself.
He was a saturnine “whip,”—for one who spoke Italian—but he smiled grimly at the next question; “Will he certainly find his way home? Will nobody try to stop, or steal him?”
“It is an everyday affair, Signorina. His supper is at the foot of the hill. Who should stop him, since everybody knows to whom he belongs and whither he goes?”
Peering over the edge of the precipice from my window, I saw the trained creature, already two hundred feet below our level, trotting at the same even gait, down the zigzag highway. Before we had gone half-a-mile further, a second met and passed us, harness on, the traces hooked up out of the way of his heels, going downward at the regulation rate of speed, neither faster nor slower than his predecessor. It was at this point that a volley of soft snow-balls flew against and into the carriage, and from their ambush, behind a drifted heap, emerged Caput and Prima, rosy with laughter and the sharp air. They had left the carriage an hour ago to walk directly across the ice-fields to this height, a straight track of two miles, while we had toiled and doubled over more than six to the rendezvous.
Snow-balling in July! The story of the “three little boys who went out to slide, All on a summer’s day,” need not have been fictitious if they were St. Gothardites. In a trice, Secunda had torn off entangling rugs and was upon the ground, and Boy halloaing vociferously to be allowed a share in the sport. The driver sat upon the box, gazing at his horses’ ears, unmoved by the whizzing missiles, merry shrieks and deafening detonations from the frozen rocks. I was cramped by long sitting, even in my luxurious nest upon the back seat. I would get out. The snow was not white, but it was snow. I longed to feel it crisp and crunch under my feet.
“Is it quite prudent?” remonstrated Miss M——, gently.
“Come on!” encouraged the revelers.
After a dozen trial-steps, I boldly avowed my intention to walk to the nearest curve in the road. Caput gave me his arm and we sent the coach on with the others. The ground was smooth as a skating-pond, but not so slippery. A mountain-wall, five hundred feet high, arose in sheer perpendicular at our left.
“Take it slowly!” cautioned my escort. “You are weak, and the air highly rarefied.”
That, then, was the reason why respiration passed rapidly from difficulty to pain. I should get used to it soon, and to the horrible aching in my right lung. But, when, having walked beyond the lee of the rocky rampart, the breeze from a neighboring glacier struck us in the face, I thought breath was gone forever. In vain Caput, turning my back to the wind, sheltered me with his broad shoulders and assured me the pain would be short-lived. The agony of suffocation went on. I had but one distinct recollection in the half-death: