Now, to the stranger it should be made known, that climbing the fells of Cumberland is no slight task—even when the traveller is allowed to pick his steps; but, with a pig to lead, no choice but to follow, and a dog behind to urge the porker on, the operation becomes one of considerable hardship, if not peril. Moreover, the mountain over which Mr. Sandboys’ pig had chosen to make his course, was called “the Moss,” or “Morass,” from its peculiar swampy character. Up went the pig, through bracken, and furze, and holly-bush, and up by the stunted oaks, and short-cut stumps, and straight on, up through the larches, over the rugged clump above Hassness; and up went Mr. Sandboys, over and through every one of the same obstacles, making a fresh rent in his trousers at every “whin-bush”—scratched, torn, panting, slipping, and—if we must confess it—swearing; now tumbling, now up again, but still holding on to the pig, or the pig holding on to him, for grim death.
But if it were difficult to ascend a Cumberland fell with a pig in front, how much more trying the descent! No sooner had “Cwoley” turned the pig at the top, than Sandboys, as he looked down the precipitous mountain up which his porker had dragged him, “saw his work before him.” It required but a slight momentum to start him; then, away they all three went together—in racing technology “you might have covered them with a sheet”—-the dog barking, and the pig squeaking, and dragging Mr. Sandboys down the hill at a rate that promised to bring him to the bottom with more celerity than safety. Unfortunately, too, the pig took his course towards the beck formed by the torrent at the “Goat’s Gills;” and no sooner did it reach the ravine, than, worried by the dog, it precipitated itself and Mr. Sandboys right down into the foaming, but luckily not very deep, waters.
But, if it were not deep, the bottom of the beck was at least stony; and there, on his back, without breath to cry out, lay the wretched Sandboys, a victim to his theory, his coat skirtless, his pantaloons torn to shreds, and the waters curling white about him, with the driving string in his hand, cut by the sharp craigs in his fall—while the legs, the loin, the griskin, and the chine—that were to have consoled the family for weeks, were running off upon the pettitoes which he had privately set aside for his own supper on some quiet evening.
Elcy, who, throughout the whole chase, had been bewailing the poor “piggy’s” troubles, and exclaiming to her father not to hurt it, screamed with terror, as, from the gate, she saw the plunge and splash; while the wicked Jobby, who had been rendered powerless by laughter, and the want of shoes, and Postlethwaite, who also had been inwardly enjoying the scene, now rushed forward to the rescue, in company with the whole household, and dragged out from the beck the bruised, tattered, bedraggled, bespattered, bedrenched, and wretched Sandboys—the more annoyed, because the first inquiry addressed to him by Mrs. Sandboys, in a voice of mingled terror and tenderness, was, “Whatever has become of the pig?”
That was a mystery which took some hour or two to solve; for it was not until Elcy and Jobby, in Postlethwaite’s old shoes, had explored both Robinson and the Moss, that they caught sight of “Cwoley” on the slope beside the foot of Buttermere Lake, dancing, in wild delight, round the shaft of a deserted mine, known as “Muddock,” where, as became evident from the string twisted round the bushes, the pig, like Curtius, had plunged suicidally into the gulf, and was then lying, unbaked, unroasted, and unboiled, in twelve foot water!
Sandboys, when the news was brought him, was, both metaphorically and literally, in hot water. He sat with his two feet in a steaming pail, and wrapped in a blanket, with a basin of smoking oatmeal gruel in his hand, Mrs. Sandboys by his side, airing a clean shirt at the fire, and vowing all the while, that she would not wonder if his obstinacy in stopping down there, starving all the family, and denying them even the necessaries of life, to gratify his own perversity, were not the death of herself and the dear children. If he caught his death, he would only have himself to blame; for there was not a Dover’s Powder within twenty miles to be had for love or money; and as for tallowing his nose, it was more than she could afford to do, for the candles were running so short, and there was not a tallow-chandler remaining in the neighbourhood, so that in a few days she knew that, all through his fine management, they would be left not only tealess, beerless, meatless, and, she would add, her dear boy shoeless, but also in positive darkness.
This second outbreak on the part of the generally placid and anti-metropolitan Mrs. Sandboys was superinduced by a discovery she had made that morning, when about to give out the soap for the next day’s monthly wash. She then remembered that the stock which she had ordered of Harker had not come to hand; and there being no opportunity of getting to Dodgson or to Herd—supposing either of them to be at Cockermouth—or of reaching any other oilman or tallow-chandler—even if such a character existed in the neighbourhood within a circuit of fifty miles—she began to see that by remaining at Hassness, she and her children would positively be reduced to a more horrible state of dirtiness than the metropolis could possibly emulate, even taking for granted the truth of all the reports concerning the Thames water, which Mr. Sandboys delighted in reading to her from the newspapers.
Scarcely had Mrs. Sandboys given vent to this “bit of her mind,” than the forms of long Postlethwaite and little Ann Lightfoot appeared at the door, to give the miserable Cursty “warning.” Ann Lightfoot begged to state, that the coals were beginning to run so short, and the large fire Mr. Sandboys had just made up to dry his clothes and shoes had so reduced their small stock, that they would be left without a spark in the range below stairs; and they had made up their minds to leave the very next day, for the kitchen was so damp, that, without a fire, they knew it would be the death of them.
Sandboys remonstrated, saying, that some of the slate-carts from the quarries at Honister would be sure to be passing the house on their way to Cockermouth, and they might order them to bring him a return cargo of coals from Great Southern. But Postlethwaite, with a pertinacity the reverse of pleasant, replied, that he had thought of all this before, if his master had not; and had watched two days consecutively, without seeing a single cart; Master Jobby, besides, had told him he knew there was no one working at the quarries, for he had not heard the sound of the blasting during the last fortnight. Without beer, without meat, without tea, without sugar, without coals, and, what was more, without tobacco—as he had been for the last ten days—Postlethwaite observed, he thought it was hard his master should expect him and Ann to stop, when the lassie was almost starved; it would be far better that they should leave the family to share amongst them the few provisions remaining.
Here Ann Lightfoot began to wipe the tears from her eyes with the corner of her apron—an action that produced a series of sympathetical sobs from Mrs. Sandboys, who hysterically gurgled out, that it was impossible to tell what would become of them all in that dreadful lonely, damp place,—without medicine—or doctor—or dinner—or even the means of warming, or lighting, or cleaning themselves.