Slowly we went at first. Then, suddenly gathering speed, we saw a dead end in front of us.
“Right!” cried Burton, and all of us leaned over to the right and thus negotiated the corner.
“Left!” was the order, and round we went every moment gathering speed.
“Careful!” he cried, “in a minute we shall have a right and left quickly. Now—! Right! Left! Up! Quick!”
By this time we were flying down the side of the mountain, showers of particles of ice every now and then being thrown up and cutting our faces. Now and again we swept through clouds of snow. We held our breath and screwed up our eyes until we could only just see.
“Left! Right! Up! Left—again! Right!” shouted Burton, and each of us alert and quick, obeyed. We were traveling at a furious speed and any fault might mean a serious accident, such as that in which one of the British Bob-sleigh team for the Olympic Sports broke both his legs during a run at Chamonix.
“Straight!” we heard Burton shout as we flew along, still down and down. “Right in a few moments,” he cried. “Be careful. Then a big bump and we’re down. Steady!—steady! Now-w-w! Right!—Look out! Bump! Good!” and he steered us down a straight path past where the watcher stood at the other end of the telephone.
“Well?” he shouted to the time-keeper, as he pulled up, “what is it?”
“Four minutes, eight and a half seconds, sir,” replied the tall, thin-faced Swiss peasant, speaking in French.
“Good! Fairly fast! But we’ll try to do it in better time tomorrow.”