A mountain shaped exactly like a sugar cone rose from straight across the water, wreathed at the very top with a grey halo of cloud. From the foot of it, every minute or so, storm signals darted out like orange soundless fireworks. The gloom was almost purple, the lake water momentarily iridescent where low light from breaking cloud struck it. Far off, a solitary slip of sunlight caught a single low alpine meadow and turned it into a flag of such luminous emerald brilliance that it too might have been some sort of signal to the opposite shore. Behind the hotel the tempestuous rain of early afternoon had turned a mountain stream into a ferocious white-green torrent that he could hear crashing down its many waterfall steps like a continuous echo of the earlier thunder. Suddenly, from behind a high perpendicular crag of rock, a steamer slid into sight, a gigantic snow-white swan dressed with many-coloured bunting. As it came nearer he could just hear from it, above the noise of the waterfall, the sound of someone playing a guitar and then of people singing.
