‘“Ho, ho!” said I, “this find ’ll make Joe Sumner stare. He’ll have to alter his figures as to what’s in that great ghyll if we go on like this.”
‘But though we found no other great number, a careful look about the walls and other likely places showed us where more lay. Altogether, our tramp about the intakes brought up twenty-three ewes in good strength and condition. One poor thing we found with a leg broken by a stone which somehow had split from the side of a rough outcrop, and another was in the pool beneath a force in the beck that runs into the valley, drowned. Joe Sumner was surprised at how we had come on. A dozen men working for their lives fairly in that great pile of snow in the beck-course had got three sheep out in as many hours. But their digging was coming near to a flat grassy spot where a dozen or so sheep lay, and here all expected success. And it was not long in coming. The sheep had clustered almost into one mass, and were lifted out one after another. In their haste the spademen had left the snow overhanging some four or five feet, and just as the seventh sheep was lugged [hauled] out, a big patch gave way, smothering everything for two or three minutes in a cloud of whirling snow-dust. When this cleared somewhat, it was found that two shepherds were still under the snow. Spades had been used before at some speed, but I can tell you that was nothing to the rush put on now. For what’s the price of a sheep to the value of the life of a man? Tons of snow were whirled aside, and in five minutes the first man was reached. He had an ugly gash on the side of his head: he had been driven down with tremendous force on to the blade of his spade. But he was still conscious, and reiterated weakly what we knew too well: “Jack Howson was further in nor [than] me.”
‘The spademen stopped work not a moment; for though a sheep can breathe through many feet of snow, a man suffers terribly when buried over a foot. Soon a boot was reached, and in a few seconds the drift had been thrown aside sufficiently for Howson to be lifted out. He was pretty much dazed, but no worse for the mishap, and in ten minutes he again took his share of the digging. Immediately beneath where his body had been lying an old ewe was found, and seven more within some two yards. Altogether, thirteen sheep were brought out. Only five were missing from both flocks now—three from mine and two from Joe’s; and as we couldn’t find the exact places—the snow was so deep that the dogs couldn’t scent them—where they were lying, we were forced to let them bide [remain]. They might have the luck, we thought, to live through till the thaw came, and the melting snow mightn’t, perhaps, drown them all. Besides’—and here the native shrewdness of the shepherd shone through the eloquence of the raconteur—‘it would have cost a deal to dig the ghyll dear of snow—far more than five ewes at forty shillings apiece are worth.‘
Seemingly, with this the story was ended, but I queried what eventually became of the five missing sheep.
‘All lost in the thaw,’ was the reply. ‘The beck flooded, and the drift sucked the water in till they were suffocated, poor things!’
IV. In Wild Weather
Under its canopy of leafless sycamores the sheep-farm stands high above the next most remote dwelling in the dale. It is a pleasant place to dwell in during summer: the great fells clothed with green, spreading beds of bracken rise close around. A great rib of rock and scree almost cuts off the tenement, so that it commands only a narrow view of the long, almost level valley. But, though so close confining it, the mountain protects neither the buildings nor the farm land immediately adjoining from the fury of winter storms. When the air becomes filled with sleet, the fields and rough mountain roads stand mid-leg-deep with half-liquid snow. A hundred feet above, the clouds fly in dense ragged beards; their damp breath penetrates nigh even to the cosy kitchen fire. The scene is cheerless: gray sky and grayer dale, relieved only with white where in the shelter of the rocks a small snowdrift resists the general thaw, or where in foamy spouting cataracts the flooded becks are gushing. Dimly seen through the sheets of snow and rain, the sheep are cowering in the dips of the intakes, and among them the shepherd is moving.
As he returns to the steading for another load of hay—it were cruelty indeed to expose even the hardiest horse to the terrible ‘clash’ prevailing—I walk out to intercept him.
‘Can I help you?’ I ask.