Читать книгу In Lakeland Dells and Fells - William T. Palmer - Страница 6

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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:

‘“Jim, come on sharp! There’s a regular host of a storm coming. Now, mister, ye’ll have to step lively if we’re to be over the pass before that great whirlwind of snow catches us!”

‘Down the snow-slope we ran, but we had barely reached the track before the gale was on us so strong we could hardly keep our feet. Beside which the snow whirled down so thick that we could hardly see one another even between the gusts.

‘I heard Joe’s voice yell above the storm, “Keep close to me, both of you!” I did my utmost, but as we got on to the plain [bleak] pass-head, with a wild skirl the wind got hold of me, and threw me headforemost into a deep drift. I’m not thinking you’ll believe me, but I had a fearful job getting out of that. The wind seemed almost solid with pelting snow, and every time I staggered to my knees it knocked me flat again.

‘In a few minutes I managed, in a lull between two earth-shaking blasts, to get on to my feet and make a rush for the road, which, at least, was free of snow. Then, jumping up as each gust blew over, and running in the little quiet before another came along, I got to the top of the pass and down into a fairly sheltered cove. Here Jim and Joe hailed me with delight. They were wondering how I had come on, Joe holding that I was all right, and the other being equally sure that some big drift had got me. They had been knocked flat by the gust that almost buried me, after which, taking advantage of every slack in the storm, they had got to shelter a good ten minutes earlier.

‘After this we got down to Joe’s house and waited—the sheep must stick [stay] for the present. The dogs, coming in long before we did, had put the folks out terribly.

‘It was near midnight when the snow passed off and we made a new start. This time our aim was not so much to dig out the lost ones, as to collect and drive down every sheep we could find. It was bright moonlight when we set off; the air was still, and the stars glished [gleamed] down as bright as if they were but a mile away. Have you ever been on a pass-head with mountains all around on a moonlight night? Some folks call it sublime and awesome, but those words mean nothing to plain men like me. Three of us climbing through drifts and along stony roads felt like we did when we were bairns, and ventured alone after dark where we believed ghosts and fairies lived. We used to cower along as if at every step we expected something terrible to happen, with our shoulders drawn in, waiting for a heavy hand to strike us. I remember well my half-sobs and nervous looks around when I had to cross the wood beyond the stepping-stones, where a murder once took place. This time we didn’t sob, though our other feelings were the same.

‘On the pass-head everything was so still that it was quite a relief when Joe whistled his dogs away to the top end of the intake, where a crowd of dark gray dots could be seen on the white. I sent my dogs to watch the further side, keeping them near the places where drifts had buried the fences. Our shouts and whistles seemed strangled in our throats by that queer stillness; but, still, they must have travelled well, for the dogs made never a mistake. The air was cold, freezing cold, but it was still, and the chill was nothing compared to the searching bite of the wind earlier in the day. In about half an hour a mixed flock of my sheep and Joe’s were being brought with loud bleatings down to where we stood.

‘Our return down the pass was done in darkness—if the combined shining of stars, northern lights, and the reflection off miles of snow, is darkness—after which I should have been glad to get to bed awhile. But Joe was determined that the sheep must be dug for at once; the great hollow where most of them lay would fill with water if a sudden thaw came, and any sheep then left in would surely be suffocated. He went the round of his neighbours’ farms to pick up any men that could be spared, while I sent the trap home for what servants my place could do without. Collecting workers is always a tedious job, but in four hours we had nine spademen mustered, and made a move for the third time up the drifted track.

‘Gray dawn was just coming when we got to the top of the pass; the silence of moonlight was gone, and our company’s talk made the dreary hillsides echo. We had plenty of dogs, so a few of us went to Borwen’s Knott—a stiff climb, where every few minutes we seemed to slip back as far as we had dragged forward. My back ached long before we got to where the sheep had been marked, and I lagged behind to rest. When I got up to the others, the dogs had marked down three sheep at no great depth—perhaps a yard or so—and the spades were clearing the snow away like mad. In a minute or two the sheep were clear, and we sent them off towards the pass-road. One of the dogs scented another close in under the crags of the Knott, and to get this out seemed like to give a lot of work. How do these sheep get buried, you say? Well, it’s sheep nature when a storm—wind, snow, rain, or the three together—gets to a certain pitch to lie down with their backs toward it. Like that they bide [remain] till the worst is over, no matter whether they are buried overhead or not. For a sheep can breathe easily through a covering of twenty feet of snow; and as its body-heat thaws a little cave, the weight above, though it may be tons, doesn’t harm it at all. The breathing-places on the snow can be picked out by a man if the sheep aren’t far under; but if they are, it takes a dog all its time to find where the beast lies. Now, as I was saying, these lost sheep at Borwen’s Knott were right in among the rocks, and pretty deep down. The shepherds, however, dug a deep trench in the drift which had plastered itself against the Knott, and after an hour’s hard work the sheep jumped up not a bit worse. At Yew-tree Ghyll a gang got down to the sheep without much trouble; one of them was so lively after passing thirty hours or more in a drift that it butted over three of the shepherds in making for the open.

‘Joe reckoned that twenty-four sheep were in the deepest part of the big ghyll, and that another score could be got at in a day’s work. While the spades were beginning work, I and two of my men took our dogs and went over the whole two intakes thoroughly. At one spot we had a surprise. A hollow in the hillside not more than a yard deep had been drifted level, and in this were, maybe, a dozen rounded lumps—tops of rocks covered with snow, we thought; but my man Jackson, as we crossed the flat, kicked his foot against one, and found nothing hard. He stopped to examine the thing. It was a sheep, lying just as it had turned its back to the storm, not covered with more than a foot of snow. We whistled the dogs up, and as they came floundering along, fully a dozen ewes jumped up and made away.

‘“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!’