IV
Captain Deverax was equally salient in the department of sports. There
was a fair sheet of ice, obtained by cutting into the side of the
mountain, and a very good tobogganing track, about half a mile in length
and full of fine curves, common to the two hotels. Denry's predilection
was for the track. He would lie on his stomach on the little contrivance
which the Swiss call a luge, and which consists of naught but three bits
of wood and two steel-clad runners, and would course down the perilous
curves at twenty miles an hour. Until the Captain came, this was
regarded as dashing, because most people were content to sit on the luge
and travel legs-foremost instead of head-foremost. But the Captain,
after a few eights on the ice, intimated that for the rest no sport was
true sport save the sport of ski-running. He allowed it to be understood
that luges were for infants. He had brought his skis, and these
instruments of locomotion, some six feet in length, made a sensation
among the inexperienced. For when he had strapped them to his feet the
Captain, while stating candidly that his skill was as nothing to that of
the Swedish professionals at St Moritz, could assuredly slide over snow
in manner prodigious and beautiful.
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