"We can do nowt but leave them to find t' ghyll," the shepherd remarked.
Kit agreed. Bleatarn ghyll was beneath him, but there was another hollow and it is hard to walk straight down hill in the dark. He must trust the sheep, and, huddling close together, they refused to leave the crag. When the dogs drove them out they vanished, and since the ground was bare of snow they left no tracks. He stumbled on, falling into pools and stumbling across banks of stones, and soon stopped again. He had come down the slope, so to speak, blindly, and now stood on the edge of a vast, dark pit. One could not see beyond the edge, but the confused noises that came up hinted at profound depth. The gale shrieked, but he heard the roar of falling water and the rattle of stones the wind dislodged.
"Do you think this is Beatarn ghyll?" he asked.
"I dinna ken," Tom answered; and added hopefully, "if it's t'ither, we'll mayhappen find oot before we step over Ling Crag."
They went down at a venture, whistling vainly for the dogs. The drop was very sharp, and now they were leaving the wind-swept pass, the snow had begun to pack among the stones and boggy grass. Still, so far as they could see, there were no marks of little feet and they wondered what had happened to the flock, until a faint bark came out of the mist. The noise got louder and Kit knew the dogs were running round the stopping sheep.
"We're right," he said. "They've gone through the broken wall and the dogs are holding them at the top of the force."
A few minutes afterwards he scrambled over a pile of fallen stones, shouted to Tom, and began to run, for he understood what had happened. The broken wall marked the boundary of the Mireside heaf and the sheep were now on familiar ground. It was his business to drive them to the farm, but they were trying to turn off to look for shelter among the crags. At the force, where the Bleatarn beck leaps in linked falls to the valley, one could get down between the water and the rocks; on the other side, a path about a foot wide led across the face of a precipice. In daylight, if the stones were dry, a man with steady nerves could use the path, but when slab and scree were packed with snow nothing but a Herdwick could cross it safely. The dogs knew this and were trying to hold the flock.
When the men came up they saw an indistinct, woolly mass on the other side of the beck. The mass was not level but slanted sharply, and the sheep at the bottom sent down showers of stones as they surged to and fro, with heads turned to the dogs. It was obvious that they did not mean to go down the ghyll, and Herdwicks born among the crags can climb where no dog can follow.
"The dogs canna turn them," gasped Tom. "They'll be away ower Eel Scar; they're brekkin' noo."
The flock began to open out and three or four sheep straggled forward, but Kit's bob-tailed dog slid down a snowy slab and fell upon the first. The sheep ran back, but the others stood and Kit saw the dog could not stop them long. The Herdwicks knew the advantage was theirs on ground like this.