Billy got up and tried again. The points of his shoes now rushed towards one another like old friends who meet after long parting. Billy's progress was instantly checked, and he sprawled forward on his face in the most ignominious fashion.
Billy scrambled up awkwardly, for one of his ski would stand on the other and keep it down. He fell three times before he finally stood erect.
'You said it was so easy,' he said, reproachfully. 'Stop laughing, Bobby,' he added, 'and try yourself.'
I did so, profiting by Billy's experience, and slid carefully forward. Ten yards I covered in safety, then a small birch-tree suddenly rose up before me. I knew no way of giving it the go-by. I tried to guide myself to one side of it, and, lo! one snowshoe went to the right of the tree, the other to the left, and I found myself jammed against the trunk.
'I say, help!' I cried. 'Cut down the tree, or take me out of the snowshoes. I can't move!'
Tom shrieked with laughter; so did Billy, who ought to have known better.
'Try to back away from the tree,' Tom suggested.
I endeavoured to do so. This time the heel ends of the shoes crossed, and I sat down very suddenly, while Tom and Billy laughed even more rudely than before. I began to realise that the art of ski-running was not a perfectly easy one even upon the level. What would it be, I wondered, when we reached the hill-side?
Though the gentle slopes chosen by Tom for our first lesson were distant but a short mile from the lodge, I think we took at least three-quarters of an hour to reach the place. The pointed ends of our snowshoes—Billy's and mine—went exactly where they pleased. They behaved like ill-natured animated things, and did us all the harm they could. This was not much, of course, except to make us appear very ridiculous; but Billy and I soon got tired of laughing at one another, so that it did not matter after a while. But when we reached the hill-side, and made our first efforts to 'shoot' the slope, the real fun began.
Bill took the first attempt. Tom had shown us how it was to be done. He had poised himself upon the top of the hill like a bird about to take wing. He had allowed his ski to tip over the edge, and in an instant he was in full flight, going at nearly thirty miles an hour over the slippery, even surface of the snow, bending slightly forward, keeping his two shoes straight as arrows, and heading, true as a bullet, for the point which he had fixed upon.