OVER THE FELLS
When day dawned, and the snowed-up travellers began to look around them, they found that, though the snow was not descending nearly as heavily as on the night before, the wind was still strong and the weather bitterly cold.
On the windward side of the train the snow had drifted almost up to the window panes, but on the leeward there was considerably less. Looking up and down the line, they could see their train surrounded by its dazzling environment, and the drifts were so high that they had filled the low cutting stretching towards Lowbay level to its top.
The train was an island in a sea of snow.
The Amorians, stiff and cramped with their narrow quarters of the night, dropped off into the snow on the sheltered side and explored as far as the overturned engine, now stark and cold, with wonder and awe.
"Why, we're like rats in a trap!" exclaimed Gus Todd.
"We'll have a council of war now," said Acton, as he saw the driver and his mate floundering towards them, "and then we can see what's to be done—if anything can be done."
It seemed the result of the council was to be the decision that there was nothing to be done. To go back to Lowbay, or forward to Lansdale, was plainly impossible, and neither guard nor driver thought they could be ploughed out under two days at the earliest. "And yet," concluded Acton, "we can't starve and freeze for two days. Look here, guard, isn't there a fell farm somewhere hereabouts? I begin to fancy——"
"There's one over the hills yonder, three or four miles away. Might as well be three hundred, for they'll never dream of our being snowed up here."
"Well, but can't we go to them, if you know the way?"
"That's just what I don't know, with all this snow about. The farm is behind that hill somewhere; but I could no more take you there than fly. Besides, who could wade up to their necks in snow for half a mile, let alone three?"
"But the snow won't be so deep on the fells as in these cuttings."
"That's true, I suppose. But get into a drift on the fell—and, Lord, that would be easy enough—you're done. And there's becks deep enough to drown a man, and you'll never see them till you're up to your chin in their icy waters. I wouldn't chance it for anything. We mun wait here till we're dug out, sir, and that's all about it."
"Where is that farm, guard? Behind which shoulder of the fell?"
"Look here, Acton," began Dick Worcester, apprehensively, "I'm hanged if we're going to let you go groping about for any blessed farm in this storm. We'll eat the coals in the tender first!"
"Thanks, Dick. Which shoulder, guard?"
The man explained as fully and elaborately as if he might as well talk as think. The shoulder of the fell was noted by Acton exactly and carefully, even to borrowing a compass pendant off Todd's historic watch—chain.
"It lies exactly N.N.E., and one could find one's way in the dark if that were all."
"But it isn't, Acton," said Grim, anxiously, "not by a long chalk. Oh, Acton, don't go!"
"I'm going to turn over the idea, Grim. But, anyhow, I don't stir out of this cutting until the snow's out of the sky."
Acton and the guard talked long and seriously, whilst the Amorians put into practical working Senior's idea of a fire beside the van. There were coals galore.
Half an hour afterwards the snow ceased. "Now," said Acton, quietly, "I know exactly where that farm is. I'm going to go now and have a try for it. I'll move the farm people, if I reach 'em, double quick back again with food, for they're used to these fells, and then we can all go back to the farm together. The fact is," said Acton, hurriedly, as he saw a chorus of dissent about to break out, "we must get out of this very soon. There's the lady and the child—and even more than that, there is the fireman, who is downright ill. We cannot wait till we're dug out; that is absolutely certain. I'm not going to run any danger, and if I find I'm likely to, I'm coming back. I fancy, really," he added, laughing, "that the most difficult part of the business will be to get out of this cutting."
The fellows all knew Acton; they knew that when he said things in a certain tone there was no good arguing. That was why Grim, with a white face, hurriedly left stoking the blazing fire and retired in dismay to the guard's van, and why Gus Todd, in an access of angry impatience, shied the magazine he had been turning over into the middle of the flames.
Jack Senior said, "This is just like you, Acton. You will fight more than your share of bargees, but this time I'm going to go one and one with you. If you like to risk being drowned in those beastly moorland streams, or to fall into some thirty-feet drift, I'm going to go too. That is final. Kismet, etc.!"
Acton looked narrowly at Senior. "All right, Jack. Get your coat on; but, honour bright, I'd rather go alone."
"Couldn't do it, old man," said Senior, whilst Worcester nodded approvingly. "What would Phil Bourne say, if he heard we'd let you melt away into—— I'm going too."
The passage out of the cutting was not so difficult as Acton had bargained for; but Worcester and Todd did wonders with the fireman's shovels and made a lane through the drifts. On the firm ground of the fell the two found that, though the snow was deep enough in all conscience, it was not to be compared with the drifts on the line. The wind now, as they started off, was whipping away the loose top layers of snow in cold white clouds, which stung the face and ears with their icy sharpness; but, with caps well down and coats buttoned up to the ears, the two trudged on. The snow had ceased, but it was plain, by the dark and lowering sky, that this might only be temporary, and Acton kept up as smart a pace as he could, heading right for the shoulder of the fell, a couple of miles away, behind which he might, if he were lucky, see that moorland farm. The hill ran down into a valley, towards which the two Amorians hurried, Acton keeping his ears well open for the faintest murmur of water.
"There's a beck somewhere down here, Jack, but we'll not see it until we're almost into it. So look out!"
"All serene! I'm on the qui vive!" Hardly were the words out of Senior's mouth than he stumbled headlong forward, the ground opening at his feet, and a narrow ribbon of cold grey water, silently sliding under its shrunken banks, caught Acton's eye. Senior had plumped cleanly into this. Luckily, it was not very deep, and he scrambled out to the other side drenched to the skin, and showing clearly enough, where he had broken through the snow on both sides, that all the care in the world would not prevent them repeating the experience. The snow overhung a yard. Acton had stopped dead when he saw Senior disappear, but in a moment he had sprung clear, and was helping his friend up the bank. The snow slipped silently into the stream as he jumped.
"That's number one," said Senior, "and only half an hour from the train! Any more hereabouts?"
"I fancy so, but we may have better luck next time."
"Hope so. Set the pace, old man, please. It's b-b-beastly c-c-cold."
Acton was thoroughly upset by this mishap, and he headed up the opposite slope of the hill with a face that showed how the incident had shaken him. Senior's teeth chattered, and he looked blue with cold. The two plodded on, Acton insisting on Senior keeping behind. Acton again had the unenviable pleasure of seeing some more of those icy waters, and their slow and deadly stealing under the snow seemed to him sinister and fatal as he pulled himself up on the brink. The care necessary, the cold, cutting wind, and the knee-deep snow, made their progress terribly slow, and Acton began to notice that Senior, despite his anxiety for a sharp pace, was already terribly fagged.
The distance widened between the two, and once, when Acton turned round and found his friend nearly thirty yards behind, his heart almost stopped beating.
"This will never do! Heaven help us if he cracks up!" He waited for the weary Senior, and then said gently, "Pace too hot, old fellow?"
"Rather. So sorry, but you seem to run almost."
"Run!" smiled Acton, bitterly. "Why, we're not doing a mile an hour. Put your heart into it, Jack, and for Heaven's sake don't let me get too much in front!"
"All serene!" said Senior, gamely.
To Acton's intense alarm, the snow had recommenced, and the wind swept it down the fells full into their faces. Acton was afraid that he might make a mistake if the snow became so heavy as to blot out the landscape, and, knowing that to do so might have terrible consequences, he nervously forced the pace.
Senior responded gamely.
"Keep well behind, old man. You'll dodge the snow better. Can you do a wee sprint? We're not far from the top of the ridge, and then we've only to work down the hill and bear to the left, and there we are."
"Only!" said Senior, wearily. "How far?"
"A bare mile. Step it out for all you're worth."
By this time it was obvious that the storm had recommenced in all its fury, and Acton, in an ecstasy of horror and anxiety lest he should turn the shoulder of the hill too late to see anything of the farm, almost ran forward. He had thrust out his head, and his eyes anxiously peered forward. They were now almost on the top of the shoulder of the fell. Acton turned round with eagerness.
"Five minutes more and we're—— He's gone!"
Senior, indeed, was not in sight. With a groan of despair, Acton ran back down the slope.
"Jack! Jack! Jack!" he howled above the wind, "Where are you?"
There was no reply
"He's lost!"
Further down the slope ran Acton, shouting into the storm. He heard nothing; not a sound. Then, and his heart almost burst with joy, his eye caught sight of a moving, staggering figure, drifting aimlessly across his path. Senior, half his senses beaten out of him by cold, wet, the wind, and lack of food, looked at the screaming Acton with uncomprehending eyes, and was aimlessly shaking off his grasp to lounge easily to death.
"He has cracked up," said Acton, in despair, and he gripped the half-senseless youth with frenzied strength.
"This is the way you're to go—with me!" he yelled.
Half-dragging, half-coaxing, uttering strange promises, to which Senior smiled stupidly, Acton regained those few but terrible yards to the top of the ridge. Then his heart almost died within him: there was nothing to be seen, as, half-blinded by the snow, he tried to peer down the valley.
"Nothing!"
Senior, bereft of his companion's arm, had sunk down happily upon the snow and looked at Acton, stupidly trying to make head or tail out of the situation. His face was darkly flushed; his lips were swollen; and his eyes were heavy with sleep.
Roused from his momentary despair by these terrible signs, Acton seized his friend by the throat of his overcoat, and jerked him to his feet. He shook him savagely until some sign of intelligence glimmered in the sleepy eyes.
"Jack! Jack! Keep awake! We'll win out yet if you do."
"All right, old man: my head buzzes awf'ly, Where are we? What are you doing?"
"We're going down the hill. Don't leave go of me whatever you do, and oh, keep awake."
"Serene," said Senior, closing his eyes again peacefully.
With a sob of horror and despair, Acton lurched down the hill, dragging his companion with him. He kept repeating, as though it were a formula: "Down the slope and bear to the left" again and again.
What the next half-hour held of misery, horror, and utter despair, Acton cannot, even now, recall without a shudder. They stumbled and staggered downwards like drunken men. The snow blinded him, and the dragging weight of Senior on his arm was an aching agony, from which, above all things, he must not free himself.
Then, as the very climax to hopeless despair, Senior rolled heavily forward and lay prone, as helpless as a log, his face buried in the snow! His cap had fallen off, and Acton watched the black curls whitening in the storm.
How long he remained there, crouched before the motionless body, he does not know; only that he tried many times to shake the dying youth from the terrible torpor in vain. Senior breathed heavily, and that was all.
All hope had died in Acton's breast. He threw himself forward beside his friend, and sobbed, with his face in the snow.
A sound reached Acton's ears which brought him to his feet with a bound. He placed his hand to his ear, and sent his very soul to the effort to fix the sound again, above the roar of the wind. It was the deep, but not distant, low of cattle.
A third time did the low boom through the storm.
Almost frantic with a living hope, Acton turned to Senior. He raised the unconscious youth, and, by a mighty effort, got him upon his shoulders, and then staggered off in the direction of the sound. He has a faint recollection that he rolled over into the snow twice, that he waded across a river, with the water up to his arm-pits, and always that there was a weight on his neck that almost throttled him.... He felt that he was going mad. Then at last—it seemed many hours—a building, wreathed in white, seemed to spring up out of the storm. Delirious with joy, Acton staggered towards it with his burden. Some figures moved towards him, and Acton shouted for help as he pitched forward for the last time into the snow. He dimly remembers strong hands raising him up and helping him through a farmyard, which seemed somehow to tremble with the low of cattle, and then he was in a chair, and a fire in front of him.
An hour or two afterwards, Acton was seated before a table, and, in the intervals of gulping down hot coffee and swallowing food, told his tale. The peasant farmer and his wife listened open-eyed with astonishment. The farmer, from sheer amazement, dropped into the broadest Westmoreland dialect.
"How far did thoo carry t'other yan?"
"Don't know, really. Seemed an awful way. I went through a river, I know. The water guggled under my arms."
"River!" said the farmer, rising up and running his hand over Acton's clothes. "He has, wife; he's waded through t' beck! Man, give us thee hand! Thoo's a—thoo's a good 'un. Noa! thoo shan't stir. I'll bring t'folk over t'fell mysel'!"
And he did—the farmhouse, a few hours afterwards, giving the snowed-up passengers a hospitality which none of them ever forgot.
There was the jolliest Christmas at "Raven Crag" that had ever been known. Mrs. Acton had whipped up a cohort of cousins et cousines—as they say in the French books—and even Grim found a partner, who didn't dance half bad—for a girl. Did I say a jolly Christmas? Well, even jolly doesn't quite do it justice.
Letters dropped in upon Acton in the course of the week. There was one from Senior's father, which made Acton blush like a school-girl. There was another, a very stately one, from the board-room of St. Eustis, wherein the secretary of the Great North and West Railway, on behalf of the directors, tendered him hearty thanks for his great services to themselves and their employees. There was another from a lady, which simply gushed. There also arrived a small lock of child's hair, which Mr. Acton was begged to accept from a little girl, who slept "on Mr. Acton's pillow." Dick Worcester claimed this, but Acton was adamant.
"I say, Todd," said Grim, earnestly, "don't you think we fellows might give Acton some memorial or other, just to show what we think of him?"
"Good, Grimmy! Trot out suggestions."
"Well, I had thought of a stained-glass window in——"
Todd couldn't look at W.E.G.'s face for days after without a quiver.