Mankind, dog-kind,
cow-kind, chicken-kind, and cheese-kind, together with many
ingredients unknown to science, combined in the making of this
composite odour, and its strength sent the Boy reeling into my arms.
"No, I can't stand it," he gasped. "I shall faint. Better freeze than
suffocate."
But I forced him in; and in five minutes, to our own self-loathing, we
had become almost inured to the smell. Eat we could not, but we drank
probably the worst brandy in all Europe or Asia, and slowly our blood
began once more to take its normal course. A spurious animation soon
enabled the Boy to start on again; one of the cowherds pointed out the
path, and for a time all went well with our little band, even Fanny
and Souris having revived on black crusts of mediaeval bread. But the
half-hour in which we had been told we might cover the distance
between chalet and hotel lengthened into an hour. The mist grew
greyer, and thicker, and darker, misleading us almost as cleverly as
its sophisticated English cousin, a London fog. Again and again we
lost our way. Owing to the fatigue of the Boy and Innocentina, and the
utter dejection of the unfortunate little donkeys, we could not walk
fast enough to keep our blood warm, and my tweeds, in which I was
buttoned to the chin, seemed to afford no more protection than
newspaper.
When I remarked this to the Boy he replied with a faint chuckle that
he felt like a newspaper himself--"a newspaper," he repeated,
shivering, "with the smallest circulation in the world.
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