"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 5¾ 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 8½ 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.