Men of Mawm

by W. Riley

Where the young lions couch.”

It is at a sudden bend in the hills that you come unawares upon the astonishing vision, but before you reach that point the landscape clothes itself in sack-cloth and throws ashes on its head as if it realised that the green pastures were to end in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and it must drape itself seemly. In winter especially there is a look of Sodom and Gomorrah about the place—a charred, lifeless look that is weird and depressing. On the one hand the slender stems of ash and hazel, rising grey from the grey hill-slope, seem as though some storm of fire had swept them. Here and there a dead tree, stripped of its bark, still mocks the power of the wild winds that are forcing it earthwards. On the left the cragged hill sweeps round in a quick semi-circle to shut in the valley. Like ragged ramparts its serrated, rocky outline shows crisp against the sky; screes of loose stone, from which here and there a huge boulder uprears its bulk, cover the sides; and other boulders, hurled down by successive avalanches, line the bank of the stream.

This, however, is only the cheerless bodement of what is beyond. When the sweep of the semi-circle forces you round the curve of the hill the vision of stern grandeur and majesty may well rob you of speech.

The hills have drawn together until they almost meet, but they are no longer hills—they are stupendous, unscaleable precipices of rock, three hundred feet high. Grim and forbidding—black rather than grey—they offer no hospitality to the foot of man; but jackdaws and ravens make their home there, and birds of prey may sometimes be seen perching on the crags.

Into this roofless cavern—for there is evidence that the beetling rocks that project overhead once met in a great arch—the stream projects itself by a series of waterfalls which roar in time of flood like the “young lions” of Wordsworth’s fancy, and rushes along its stony channel scattering white foam upon the piled-up boulders that almost fill the floor of the chasm and make progress difficult. Steps have been cut in the rock beside the lower waterfall so that even the inexpert may climb to the “upper air,” and on their way to the higher reaches of the stream may trace out for themselves the course of the great convulsions that gave to Mawm its wonderland. Level with the summit of the cliffs is the moor with its far-stretching fissured platforms of grey limestone.

Awe-inspiring even in brilliant sunshine the chasm is really “terrific” at night. Then the frowning cliffs roof themselves in with blackness and the roar of the Stygian stream is direful. Man shuns it, and the birds that shriek and chatter there are birds of ill-omen.

Between the hours of twelve and one on a dark night in the last week of March when yet the faint crescent of a new moon gave a glimmer of light, a man made his way stealthily across the field, and in the shadow of the high walls, towards the Scar. When he reached the entrance he sat down on a rock with his back to the cliff, and for the space of ten minutes remained absolutely motionless. But though his body was still, his intelligence was alert, and his senses were scouting for him. He was accustoming himself to the sounds that become easily distinguishable when one listens intently; and training his eyes to penetrate the darkness. Directly opposite to where he sat the ravine touched hands with the valley; the frowning western cliff ran out upon the moor and became dismembered; the upper part falling back from the lower. On the intervening space a portion of the steep slope was carpeted with green; but the greater part was covered with a thick deposit of loose shingle, the plunder snatched by wild free-booting storms from the rocks overhead. Below there was another wall of rock of no great height above the stream that raged at its base.

Inman—for the nocturnal visitor was he—rose at last, and as if satisfied that no further precautions of an elaborate nature were necessary, crossed the stream and set himself to scale the rock. Apparently he was familiar with his task, for he climbed confidently and before long had his feet upon the shingle. It was here that the more serious part of the adventure began, and from the hesitating way in which he set out upon the second part of his journey it was evident that he regarded it with some distaste.

Every movement of his feet sent a mass of loose stones hurtling down the slope, and he made slow progress. To his sensitive ears the noise was appalling, for the air was still and sound travelled far. In the distance a dog began to bark, and kept on barking loudly and uneasily, but although Inman cursed it in his heart he did not allow it to affect his movements. Helping himself forward with his hands, he had almost reached the stretch of green at which he was aiming when a too eager step set the unstable track in motion; and in spite of his efforts—it may be even because of them—he was carried with ever-accelerating speed down the precipitous incline and only saved himself at the very edge of the low cliff.

For some minutes he lay prone, thinking deeply, whilst the shingle continued to roll past him. After a while it ceased to fall, and he had just determined to rise and make a second attempt when he became convinced that the dog was loose and coming in his direction, whereupon panic seized him, and having groped with his toes until he found a crevice in the rock, he lowered himself to the ground.