The wind howled a menace to Mercédès, as she glided down the winding
road towards the comfortable, domestic-looking suburbs of Lucerne.
Banks of cloud raced each other across the sky, and, crossing the
bridge over the Reuss, we saw that the waters of the Lake, turquoise
yesterday, were to-day a sullen indigo. The big steamers rolled at
their moorings; white-crested waves were leaping against the quays,
and thick mists clung like rolls of wool to the lower slopes of
Pilatus.

Molly's spirits rose as the mercury in the barometer fell. "Would you
care for people if they were always good-tempered, or weather if it
were always fair?" she asked me (we were sitting together in the
tonneau, Jack driving). "I revel in storms, and if we have one
to-night, when we are on the Pass, one of the dearest wishes of my
life will be gratified. 'A storm on the St. Gothard!' Haven't the
words a thunder-roll? Sunlight and mountain passes don't belong
together. I like to think of great Alpine roads as the fastnesses of
giants, who threaten death to puny man when he ventures into their
power."

It had been arranged that we should "potter" (as Winston called it)
round the arms of the star-fish lake, until we reached Flüelen; that
from there we should steal as far as we dared up the Reussthal while
daylight lasted, dine at some village inn, and then, instead of
returning to the lowlands of Lucerne, make a dash across the mighty
barrier that shut us away from Italy. Under a lowering sky, and
buffeted by short, sharp gusts of wind, which seemed the heralds of
fiercer blasts, we swung along the reedy shores of the narrowing lake,
the broken sides of the Rigi standing finely up on our right hand.
Winston was satirical about the poor Rigi and its railway, calling it