in the inmost entrails.
Yet the brain was only steadied and excited by this sea of brazen
noise. After a few moments I knew the place and felt at home in it.
Then I enjoyed a spectacle which sculptors might have envied. For they
ring the bells in Davos after this fashion:--The lads below set them
going with ropes. The men above climb in pairs on ladders to the beams
from which they are suspended. Two mighty pine-trees, roughly squared
and built into the walls, extend from side to side across the belfry.
Another from which the bells hang, connects these massive trunks
at right angles. Just where the central beam is wedged into the
two parallel supports, the ladders reach them from each side of the
belfry, so that, bending from the higher rung of the ladder, and
leaning over, stayed upon the lateral beam, each pair of men can keep
one bell in movement with their hands. Each comrade plants one leg
upon the ladder, and sets the other knee firmly athwart the horizontal
pine. Then round each other's waist they twine left arm and right. The
two have thus become one man. Right arm and left are free to grasp the
bell's horns, sprouting at its crest beneath the beam. With a grave
rhythmic motion, bending sideward in a close embrace, swaying and
returning to their centre from the well-knit loins, they drive the
force of each strong muscle into the vexed bell. The impact is earnest
at first, but soon it becomes frantic. The men take something from
each other of exalted enthusiasm. This efflux of their combined
energies inspires them and exasperates the mighty resonance of metal
which they rule. They are lost in a trance of what approximates to
dervish passion--so thrilling is the surge of sound, so potent are the
rhythms they obey. Men come and tug them by the heels. One grasps
the starting thews upon their calves. Another is impatient for their
place. But they strain still, locked together, and forgetful of the
world. At length they have enough: then slowly, clingingly unclasp,
turn round with gazing eyes, and are resumed, sedately, into the
diurnal round of common life. Another pair is in their room upon the
beam.

The Englishman who saw these things stood looking up, enveloped in his
ulster with the grey cowl thrust upon his forehead, like a monk. One
candle cast a grotesque shadow of him on the plastered wall. And when
his chance came, though he was but a weakling, he too climbed and for
some moments hugged the beam, and felt