One, two, three, four, five. There were five of them.
Five couriers, sitting on a bench outside the convent on the summit of
the Great St. Bernard in Switzerland, looking at the remote heights,
stained by the setting sun as if a mighty quantity of red wine had been
broached upon the mountain top, and had not yet had time to sink into the
snow.
This is not my simile. It was made for the occasion by the stoutest
courier, who was a German. None of the others took any more notice of
it than they took of me, sitting on another bench on the other side of the
convent door, smoking my cigar, like them, and - also like them - looking
at the reddened snow, and at the lonely shed hard by, where the bodies of
belated travellers, dug out of it, slowly wither away, knowing no
corruption in that cold region.
The wine upon the mountain top soaked in as we looked; the mountain
became white; the sky, a very dark blue; the wind rose; and the air turned
piercing cold. The five couriers buttoned their rough coats. There
being no safer man to imitate in all such proceedings than a courier, I
buttoned mine.