TWO days later, we were once more on the road, Frater, Belle Soeur and I. We were going up over the Faulhorn to Lake Brienz on the other side, and just because it was so easy to step out of our back door and start up the slope and we had no prick of a train to catch, we lingered around over last words and last preparations a good hour longer than we should have done. And for some reason that day we did not walk with our usual snap. So we reached the summit at tea-time instead of at lunch-time.
It had been a very beautiful trip up, with the Grindelwald valley sinking lower and lower, and the white peaks behind the Eiger and Wetterhorn opening up more and more. The Schreckhörner are wonderfully impressive from this view and the Finsteraarhorn attains nearly the majesty that belongs to it. The early part of the way the prospect is framed by the fir trees through which one looks. Above the tree belt the foreground is still by no means lacking in picturesque incidents, chief among which are the cold round little Bach lake and the jagged Röthihorn and Simelihorn peaks.
On the summit, which is nearly nine thousand feet high, there is a very solid little stone hotel constructed to withstand the terrible storms which sweep over so exposed a spot. Toward Lake Brienz the drop is very steep,—almost precipitate at first. One looks way over to Lake Lucerne, Pilatus and Rigi. But when we came there that region was covered with fleecy white clouds, which looked like a great churned-up foamy lake, with little mountain-peak islands rising above it here and there. The effect was singularly beautiful—much more so than any topographic clearness could have been.
As we drank our tea and enjoyed the view, we made inquiries of the proprietor as to our path downward to Giessbach on Lake Brienz. He tried to dissuade us from attempting it, saying the path was long, rough, and hard to find, and we could not possibly get there before dark. He said that professional delicacy prevented his urging us to remain where we were over-night, which would obviously be the most sensible thing to do, so he would suggest our going to the Schynige Platte, where we could arrive before dark and have a fine path all the way. The Schynige Platte is an excursion place on a lower spur of the Faulhorn ridge, connected by rack and pinion railway with Interlaken. We had resolutely kept away from it all summer and had no notion of visiting it now. Neither did we want to stay all night at the Faulhorn. So we resolved to try for Giessbach and trust to luck to get some shelter if we did not make our destination.
The proprietor disapprovingly pointed out our route as far as he could. No one had been that way for some days, and in the meantime there had been a heavy fall of snow, so the first part of our progress was not rapid, as we sunk half-way to the knees at each step.
After passing a curious rocky pinnacle like an upward-pointing finger, which had been our first land-mark, we got rid of the snow and were able to descend quite rapidly across a rock-strewn plain. It was here that we heard the Whistling Marmots and marked one more of our life ambitions achieved.
I do not know why we had yearned so intensely all summer for whistling marmots, but we had,—even more than for edelweiss, which is too obvious. Baedeker has a way of mentioning them in very solitary places like the Gries Pass or the Rawyl, but we had never met them as scheduled. We had seen a marmot in captivity in Grindelwald, but he was a very sad and depressed little furry beast who would never have dreamed of whistling. But here, when we were least thinking of them, we must have walked right into a marmot colony. We heard their little voices calling to each other, whistling unmistakably, and saw them scurrying to their holes among the rocks as we approached.
We lost our trail a dozen times, but having some abandoned cheese huts just above the woods to direct ourselves to, it did not greatly matter.
Once among the trees, how dark it got all of a sudden! We took the wrong path and found ourselves on the edge of nothing, retraced our steps and started again. We were going just as fast as we could, racing with the darkness, but we soon realized that, so far as Giessbach was concerned, the race would be a losing one. It was so piercingly cold that a night in the open air sounded painful, and we kept on in the hope of finding something.
Just in the last moment of twilight we emerged from the thick woods onto a grassy shoulder upon which was an empty cow-shed. Above it was a loft full of hay. On the ground was a ladder. Nothing was locked. Perhaps fifteen hundred feet below us we could see the roofs of a group of huts, which appeared to be inhabited—about such a place as Nieder Rawyl. It was very doubtful if we could find our way down to them through the woods, so dark had it become, and we decided that a clean hayloft to ourselves would be better than the hospitality they could offer anyhow. So we decided to stay. Fortunately we had ample left from our luncheon to serve us for supper, and by skimping a bit, we could save something for breakfast.
We spent a long time trying to start a bonfire at which to warm ourselves and dry our snow-wet shoes. It could have been done by using loose boards which we saw lying around outside, but we had conscientious scruples against making ourselves quite so much at home (or some of us had) and tried to construct the fire from brush gathered in the woods, all of which appeared to be water-soaked.
At last, however, Frater’s bonfire skill triumphed, and we sat down around a cheerful little blaze and steamed out our very chilly water-logged shoes and dress skirts and watched the moon rise over the mountain top. Then, when sufficiently warm, dry and sleepy, we climbed up the ladder into the loft, buried ourselves deep in the hay, and were soon lost to consciousness.
Anybody who has a lingering idea that there is something poetic in sleeping among the fragrant hay of a loft, had better revise his views. It is distinctly tickly and scratchy and full of dust. And the rats run in and out. However, it is clean and warm, and if you’re tired enough, it will serve.
In the early gloaming we were awakened by voices outside. Two men were circumnavigating our hut engaged in earnest discussion. Probably they belonged in the huts below, had seen our bonfire the night before and had come up to find out what damage had been done. Being satisfied on this point, they departed. The ladder was standing against the side of the barn where the loft door was and Belle Soeur’s alpenstock was lying on the ground below, so they must have known we were still there, but they did nothing to disturb us. Meanwhile we, having nothing to gain by an interview, lay low and held our peace. Each of us thought that the other two were asleep and he or she was the only moral coward, but we found later that we were three of a kind! Really, though, the consciousness of being a trespasser does put one at a disadvantage, and the inability to communicate freely with a patois-speaking peasantry increases the handicap.
After our involuntary hosts had taken themselves away, we emerged from our several nests and picked the wisps of hay from each other. It was very cold and gray at that hour, and the inadequate fragments of stale sandwiches left from the day before were not the most cheering sort of breakfast. When we had consumed the last crumb and performed scanty ablutions in an ice-water brook near by and left everything snug and tight at our late lodgings, we started downward. Our muscles were painfully stiff at first, but gradually limbered up.
About nine o’clock we reached an outlying refreshment house overhanging the Giessbach, whose course we had been following for some time, and here we stopped for a belated, but much appreciated, café-au-lait.
The rest of the day was, from the point of view of a trio of tramps who had spent the night in a hayloft after forgathering with whistling marmots, distinctly civilized and commonplace. We reached the level of Lake Brienz and skirted it to the upper end where the Aar flows in from the Meiringen Valley. We cut across to the Brünig Pass road and followed the gentle grade upward, lunching late (in view of the nine o’clock breakfast) at a roadside restaurant.
Not only railroad and carriages, but even automobiles go over the Brünig, so it can be imagined that it is not strenuous climbing, nor are its views, though attractive, grandiose.
After leaving the summit, we fairly annihilated space, and by dinner-time had reached the village rejoicing in the euphonious name of Giswil. We put up at a rather comfortable inn where we seemed to be the only guests, but the proprietor’s children appeared so incredibly numerous that we decided he had gone into the hotel business to get their groceries at trade rates.
I asked the maid waiting on us at dinner what time the train left for Lucerne in the morning. She said she wasn’t sure, and would I come down and examine the time-table in the lower hall? It was a very large and complex sheet, some three feet by six, but I thought I could master a time-table—any time-table. We all have our little vanities. I took plenty of time at it and at last found the column and the correct direction and emerged triumphant with the information that the train left at 7.15, and accordingly gave careful directions that our coffee was to be ready at 6.30 and we were to be called at 6.
Things were just a trifle late next morning, and as we were not sure of the distance to the station, we bolted our breakfast and hurried about the paying of our bill and walked at an uncomfortably rapid gait, arriving with just the desirable five minutes to spare, according to our watches. To our surprise the ticket office was closed. So were the baggage office and the freight office. There was not an employee in sight. Were our watches wrong? Had the train already left? Even so, it seemed incredible that the premises could have been completely deserted so quickly. At last, having nothing else to do, I began to study the time-tables on the walls. And then I made a discovery. The train we were trying to take ran only on Sundays and the 12th of May, and it wasn’t either! The regular week-day train wasn’t due for an hour.
I wish to say that the conduct of my companions at this juncture was truly magnanimous. The laugh was very distinctly on me, but they didn’t laugh it. They expended all their risibility on the 12th of May. That annual date on which our train ran seemed to tickle their funny-bones exquisitely. They never once reproached me for the too-hastily swallowed coffee and the precious minutes of sleep that might have been, but wandered off to visit the cemetery or some such cheerful spot, while I read Baedeker and kept guard over the knapsacks in the waiting-room.
If there had been a train when we thought and we had only five minutes before it was due, we certainly should have missed it, for I think it took the station-master a good twenty minutes to make out our tickets. They involved a whole ten miles of railroad travel from Giswil to Alpnachstad, and a boat trip from there to Lucerne. The tickets were long folding affairs in many sections, as for a trip across the continent, filled in at many places with writing (there was also a book in which the poor man had to write an extraordinary amount), and I think they cost us eighteen cents apiece!
The approach to Lucerne by boat instead of by train must be a very pleasant one in any respectable sort of weather, but our day had turned into a gray drizzle with a gale of freezing wind. Mists and clouds shut out all the mountains, and the face of the lake was lashed into a sort of impotent baby fury. It was this kind of a day, I am sure, when Gesler had Tell unbound to take charge of the imperiled row-boat. It was not perilous on a modern lake passenger boat, but neither was it joyous.
