He managed to take a few steps, but fell once more, and slid downwards on his stomach. He began to crawl on all fours. His gloves were wet, the snow was inside his leggings, but he must push on. Anything rather than stay there! Melting snow and sweat poured down his cheeks. He could not see for the driving snow, and it looked as though he had lost his way; it made him weep aloud as he crept toilsomely upward. But it was hard work crawling along on all fours in a long coat; he stood up again and stepped forward, battling with the blizzard. For every half-step he made forward he slipped two steps back; he did climb a little farther, but then his feet flew out from under him, and he slid downward with his face buried in the prickly snow. When he picked himself up, he found that he had lost his stick.
Meanwhile clouds of snow were flying over the mountains, massing on the rocks, hissing, bellowing, roaring. The messenger sobbed aloud, gasping with terror and exertion; he climbed on, stopped, took another step and another, halted, turned his back to the wind and took a deep breath through his burning mouth, and then—O Christ in Heaven!—took one step more. He held on to a tree. What was the time? With the greatest effort he drew out his turnip watch in its transparent yellow case. It was encrusted with snow. Perhaps darkness was coming on. Should he turn back? But he couldn’t have far to go now!
The fitful gale had changed into a steady blizzard. Clouds rolled along the slope, a dark and dirty mist full of hurtling sleet. The snow rushed down horizontally, straight into his face, blocking up the eyes, nose and mouth; with wet frozen fingers it had to be dug, half melted, from the cavities of the ears and eyes. The front of the messenger’s body was covered with a layer of snow two inches thick; his coat was rigid, as stiff and heavy as a board—you could not bend it; the cakes of snow on his boot-soles grew bigger and heavier with every step. And in the forest it was getting dark. And yet, good heavens, it was barely two in the afternoon!
Suddenly a greenish-yellow darkness poured over the forest, and the snow gushed down like a cloudburst. Flakes the size of your hand, wet and heavy, flew whirling by so thickly that the dividing line between earth and air was lost. A man cannot see a step in front of him. He breathes the flakes in, wades on through the roaring blizzard that dashes high over his head, pushes on blindly as if he were cutting a little passage down there under the snow. He has but one overmastering instinct—to push on. He yearns for one thing only—to breathe something other than snow. He can no longer lift his feet from the snow; he drags them through the drifts reaching halfway to his hips; he makes a track which instantly closes up behind him.
Meanwhile in the cities far below a few sparse flakes fluttered down to be melted into black mud. The lights were lit in the shops, the cafés were all aglow, people sat around under the electric globes and grumbled what a miserable gloomy day it was. Numberless lights were ablaze all over the great city, sparkling in the watery mire.
One solitary glimmer shone over the storm-swept field on the mountain. It pierced with difficulty through the falling snow, wavered up and down, and nearly expired; nevertheless, it was there, still shining. There was a light in the Hut in Bear Valley.
It was five o’clock, and therefore pitch-dark, when a shapeless something stopped in front of the Hut in Bear Valley. That “something” spread out its thick white wings and began to beat its body with them and peel off a coating of snow four inches thick. Beneath the snow a coat became visible, and below the coat two feet, and these feet stamped on the stone doorstep, till great lumps of snow dropped from them. It was the messenger from Spindelmühl.
He entered the hut and saw a thin gentleman sitting at the table. He tried to utter a greeting, but his voice failed him completely. It only made a little wheezing noise like that of escaping steam.
The other man rose: “My good man, what the devil brings you here in a blizzard like this? Why, you might never have got through alive!”
The messenger nodded and gurgled.
“If it isn’t absolute madness!” growled the other, and told the servant to bring some tea. “Well, where were you making for, then, dad? Martin’s Hut?”
The messenger shook his head and opened his leather pouch; it was full of snow; he took out a telegram frozen so stiff that it crackled.
“Bha, bha, Bharek?”
