III. A Mountain Catastrophe
I wish it to be clearly understood that I am reproducing, without ornament or argument, the tale of a mountain catastrophe as told by a rheumy little man of sixty-five, the holder of a well-known sheep-farm among the fells. The scene in which it was told to me was one of the bleakest tracts on the Lakeland mountains; others of my party had pushed on towards the dale, leaving me to hear the old man’s story. This was told in a strong dialect, reproduced with difficulty in ordinary English, and in this version I have tried to retain the simple directness of his narrative.
‘Joe Sumner was in charge of my sheep in the intake just beyond the pass-head there. In summer I used to go once a week or so to look my lot over, and, with Joe’s help, to doctor any sick. In winter I always went up after a snowstorm to help dig out any that had been caught in the drifts. Well, one December there was a fearful storm; the wind from south-east brought eight inches of snow to us in the lowlands. As soon as the worst blew over I harnessed up, took Jim, one of my men, and three dogs, and drove over to Joe’s house at the pass-foot. He was waiting for us, and said that he was afraid a good many sheep were lost in a ghyll which had been drifted level. He mounted the trap, bringing a lad to look after the horse while we were in the intakes.
‘The way up was pretty bad to drive; here and there the snow had drifted right across the roadway, but the old mare pulled through easily when we had got out and lightened the trap. Just below the summit was about a mile of level nearly clear of drifts, and along this we rattled at a fairish pace. At the top we got out, and sent the lad back with the trap. It had been blowing pretty thin all the morning, but the first sweep into our faces from northward simply doubled us up with cold. The hills around this pass-head always look wild and dreary, but never so bad as when yards deep in snow. Joe and his dogs led us to a hollow in the fellside where in summer a beck rattled down in a score pretty waterfalls. This was drifted nearly level.
‘Joe came to a stop at the bottom of this great mass of snow—a hundred yards long, ten deep, and maybe twenty to thirty wide.
‘“I’ve been out since daylight looking up the sheep, and there’s fifty-eight missing—twenty-eight of mine and thirty of yours. My dogs scented a few in Yew-tree Ghyll, and one or two nigh Borwen’s Knott, but I hadn’t time to dig any of them out. However, I think that the best part of them that is missing are in this ghyll, and maybe we’d better try to get the nearer ones out now.”
‘A pair of spades were going very shortly in an outlying patch, where the dogs had marked a buried sheep. The snow was dry, and flew in great clouds like powder. I was watching the others at work. The breeze was—well, I said its first sweep was a marvel for coldness, and I thought it wasn’t possible for wind to be more bitter. But as the minutes went on, it grew decidedly worse, so I took shelter behind a big rock. Of course, a wind could hardly blow over many a weary mile of snow and then be anything but freezing itself. I whistled for the dogs, but they didn’t come, and in a few minutes, wondering what mischief they were up to, I ventured out. Was that old Dobbin ranging on the road half a mile away? I whistled my hardest—dogs can pick up a further sound than a man, as any shepherd knows: it stopped a moment, then turned and leathered heedlessly away. Black, Nan, and Bob were also on the road galloping for home. I couldn’t understand it, so called Joe up. He was puzzled as well.
‘“There’s something in it,” he said, pondering like, as he looked around. “I bet it’s fairly frozen the poor little beggars out. Whew! I never knew it so cold as this, even on the pass!”
‘We were both looking northwards towards the dark lake and the dismal white mountains, when the great mass of a far-off range suddenly disappeared, and in its place a murky gray cloud seemed to leap from summit to summit in our direction. Joe gasped, and then turned with a yell: