A Night in the Snow | Page 4

to Wolstaston in time for my six o'clock evening service, and I did not anticipate that I should encounter any greater difficulties in my return home than I had done in coming to Ratlinghope.
During the three quarters of an hour, however, that we had been in church, the aspect of the weather had completely changed. A furious gale had come on from E.S.E., which, as soon as I got on the open moorland, I found was driving clouds of snow and icy sleet before it. It was with considerable difficulty that I made my way up the western ascent of the hill, as I had to walk in the teeth of this gale. The force of the wind was most extraordinary. I have been in many furious gales, but never in anything to compare with that, as it took me off my legs, and blew me flat down upon the ground over and over again. The sleet too was most painful, stinging one's face, and causing such injury to the eyes, that it was impossible to lift up one's head. I contrived, however, to fight my way through it, and at length reached the crest of the hill. Though I could not see many yards in any direction, I knew at this time exactly where I was, as I passed the carcase of a mountain pony which I had previously noticed. The poor thing had no doubt been famished to death, and was fast wasting to a skeleton. Numbers of these hardy little animals have perished during the severe weather from hunger, having been previously reduced to the lowest condition through lack of pasturage during the dry season of 1864. One man, who owned fourteen of them, has lost every one.
Leaving this solitary waymark, the half buried skeleton, by which I had rested for a few minutes and taken a little of my brandy, I started again, having first made a careful observation of the direction in which I should go. After a further struggle across the level summit of the hill, I reached my second landmark, a pool in a little hollow between the hills, which is well known to the inhabitants of the district, and interesting to naturalists, as the resort of curlews and other rare birds; here again I took a short rest, and then started upon what I fondly dreamed would be the last difficult stage of my journey.
My way from the pool lay first up a steep ascent for rather less than half a mile to the top of the hill, and then across a level flat for some three or four hundred yards, when a fir plantation would be reached at the edge of the enclosed ground. Once within the friendly shelter of those firs, I knew that the remainder of my walk, though still tedious and fatiguing, would be comparatively easy. It pleased God, however, that I should never reach them that night. Doubtless I had been too confident in my own powers, and at the very time when I thought the difficulties and dangers of my task were well nigh accomplished, I was taught a lesson which I shall remember to the latest hour of my life. I ascended the hill to the flat already spoken of, though it was a very slow process, for owing to the depth of the drifts, which were now increasing rapidly, and the force of the wind, I was compelled to crawl a great part of the way. The storm now came on, if possible, with increased fury. It was quite impossible to look up or see for a yard around, and the snow came down so thick and fast that my servant, who had come some distance up the lane from Wolstaston in hopes of seeing something of me, describing it to me afterwards, said, "Sir, it was just as if they were throwing it on to us out of buckets." I fought on through it, however, expecting soon to come to the fir wood. On and on I went, but not a glimpse of its friendly shelter could I see, the real fact being that I had borne away a great deal too much to the right, almost at right angles to my proper course. Having been blown down over and over again, I had probably, in rising to my feet, altered my direction unconsciously. The wind too, by which I had been trying to steer, proved a treacherous compass; for, as I have been told, about this time it went more round into the south. It was, moreover, becoming very dark. After a while I became aware that the ground under my feet was of a wrong shape, sloping downwards when it should have been level, and I then knew that I had