LOST ON THE MOOR

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XII, Issue XVI, 21 April 1894, Page 383

LOST ON THE MOOR

A TRUE STORY. By David Ker. I. 'The shadows of a cold, bleak, stormy winter evening of the true English sort were coming down upon the hills and moors of Yorkshire, when two boys—the taller of whom ■carried on his shoulder a small bag, which seemed to be well filled—came scrambling through the deepening darkness up one of the steepest ridges, as if in haste to get home. And well might they be so, for they bad had a long and hard day’s work, and were both beginning to feel very tired. Since early morning they had been out * Thomasing,’ as the country folk in those parts call it; for it is a local custom for the Yorkshire village lads to go from house to house on St. Thomas’s day (20th December), singing carols and collecting * doles,’ which usually take the form of bread, ginger-cake, and cheese, with perhaps a few pennies, as with the Russian peasants on Christmas eve. On this occasion our two young heroes had made a much wider circuit than usual, in order to visit two or three outlying farm-houses at a considerable distance from their own village; and they were well rewarded, for, to their great joy, they received a much larger dole than they had ever had before, which comprised half a dozen jam tarts hot from the oven. But all this took up a good deal of time, and when the boys turned their backs upon the last and most distant house, afternoon had already waned into evening, and evening was fast deepening into night. * Aa say, Dick, it be coomin’ on dark,’ said Tom, the elder of the two, to his cousin Dick. * We’d best goo oop t’ hill to t’ waggonway auver the top ; that be t’ gainest [the best] way whoam.’ Dick agreed, and the two lads set off at their best speed up the ridge, Tom, as the stronger, taking the bag, which till then they had carried by turns. One bv one, as the night fell, the village lads straggled back from their quest; but Tom and Dick were not with them. Just at first, however, no one, not even their own parents, felt at all inclined to be anxious about the missing boys. -One or two of their comrades had heard them talk of going to vi-it some of the more distant farms, and it was taken for granted that they had done so ; and even when night came and brought no sign of them, the family merely concluded that they had been * put up ’ in one of these farmhouses for the night in the hospitable old north-country fashion, and would come home the first thing next morning. But when morning came, and still there was nothing to be seen or heard of the lost lads, the village folk began to be alarmed ia earnest, and all who could be spared for the work set off in a body, with the fathers of the two boys at their head, to ‘beat’ the upland moors for some trace of them. The young castaways were traced from house to house easily enough as far as a farm called Stormy Hall, the last ■place at which they had called ; but here the search was brought to a sudden stop. No one in the house had any idea which way the boys had gone after leaving it, and the hearts of the anxious seekers died within them as they strained their eyes over the wild waste of bire hills, bleak moors, and pathless swamps, which lay outstretched around them on every side, and thought of the long, cold, stormy night that the poor little wanderers must have spent in this .grim wilderness without any shelter whatever. For such fears, unhappily, there was only too good ■reason. When the boys left Stormy Hall, they had gone briskly ■up the steep and slippery ridge above them, never doubting that they would soon find themselves on the waggon track that ran along the brow of the hill, and be able to follow it till they came within hail of their own village. But fortune was against them. Tired as they were, and cumbered with a pretty heavy bag to boot, this up-hill struggle over wet and slippery ground was terribly exhausting, and every now and then they came to a broad belt of matted gorse and bracken, which, withered though it was, was still no trifling obstacle to boys of their age and size. Long ere they were half-way up the slope the last gleam ■of the red and angry sunset had faded from the crest of the hill above them, and the cold black gloom closed round them like the creeping shadow of death, while the dreary moan of the rising wind foretold but too plainly the coming storm. Amid that rayless blackness even a man who knew the ground by heart might well have been at a loss to find bis way ; and the boys, who had been there only two or three times before in their whole life, soon found themselves walking quite at random (having neither moon nor star to guide them), and could hardly tell, as they stumbled over roots and stones, or fell sprawling into yawning rifts, whether they were going up hill or down. To add to their •troubles a cold rain now began to fall, and the biting sweep

of the wind (which was fast rising to a perfect gale) chilled them to the very bone, wet as they already were from constant splashing through the marshy hollows. For some time they struggled blindly on in silence, neither of them daring to hint to the other the hideous thought which had risen up at the same moment in the minds of both ; but at length Dick, the weaker and less resolute of the two, said, gloomily, • Na use, iom ; we be lost ! ’ • I’s thinkin’ so mysel’.’ replied Tom, as cheerily as he could, though his heart sank at the fearful word ; * but what if we be? A neeght on t’ moor is na sic mighty matther. We mun [must] find some shelter, and when t* sun cooms oop, we’se goo whoam a’ reet. ’ But scarcely were the fearless words uttered when a lond crash was heard, and the speaker found himself sprawling on bis nose in a deep grass-grown hollow, while Dick, unable to stop himself, tumbled headlong after him. The next moment, however, Tom picked himself up again, and burst into a loud hearty laugh. *“ Shelter,” says I, and here it be. We’re a’ reeght now, Dick, lad. This be yan [one] o’ they hollows wheer the sheep shelter in a storm. Lay thysel’ doon under the bank, and I’se cover thee oop.’ Dick curled himself up under the sheltering bank, and nestled into the ling that grew thick and high over the whole hollow, while Tom, having gathered three or four armfuls of it and covered him well up, crept in beside him. fl. They were none too soon, for hardly had they taken their places when the storm burst in all its fury. The wind howled and shrieked, and the heavy bullets of rain came hammering npoa the scattered boulders, or hissed and pattered amid the withered fern and dry heather, and in the utter darkness the snapping of the dead twigs broken off and whirled away by the furious blast was like an incessant firing of pistol shots all around them. But the hardy boys, to whom a night on the open moor was no new thing, only laughed at the rage of the storm (from which they were pretty well protected by the thick ling and the overarching bank), and set to work to dispose of the food with which their day’s round had luckily supplied them. The jam tarts, in which some warmth still lingered, were specially relished, and Tom, with his mouth full of ginger-bread, declared it to be ‘ main fine stuff on a canid neeght.’ But though our heroes were well defended against the tempest, they had no protection from the frost, and as the night wore on it grew so bitterly cold that it seemed to freeze the very blood in their veins, and the reckless lads began to see the full peril of their position. With them, as with the sufferers in the Black Hole of Calcutta, it was now merely a question of whether they could keep alive till morning. By this time, however, the weary boys, spent with fatigue and numbed with cold, were in no case to make any fresh effort for their own safety. All that they could do was to spread the now empty canvas bag over as much of their bodies as it would cover, and then, nestling close together for warmth, thev fell into a heavy sleep. The dawn of the shortest day in the year had not yet struggled through the blackness when Tom awoke. He found himself so stiff and numb that he could hardly stand, and for some moments was fully occupied in warming his half-frozen blood by stamping his feet and flapping bis arms. Then he called to his cousin, but there was no answer. ‘ Dick !’ he shouted, but poor Dick replied only with a faint groan. He was alive, however—that was something ; but what was to be done ? Dick was evidently failing fast, and would die if help were not speedily obtained. But how to obtain it? Tom felt that he could not walk a quarter of a mile to save his life, and there was little hope of any one passing that lonely place at so untimely an hour. But just as the poor lad was straining his weary eyes through the gloom in silent desperation, he caught the tinkle of a small bell only a little way beyond him, and his practised ear detected at once that it was not a sheep bell, but one of those which the northern teamsters are wont to fasten to the harness of their horses. The waggon road that they had sought in vain, then, must lie just above the spot where they had spent the night, and this must be a cart passing along it. Frantic at the thought of losing this last hope, our hero gathered all his strength, and sent forth a yell worthy of a Comanche Indian. * Hallo I’ shouted a horse voice, which, gruff and surly as it was, seemed to our poor Tom the sweetest sound he ever heard. He made toward it, and gasping out the one word * Dick 1’ fell fainting into the strong arms of a burly carter, who was on his way to Rosedale Pit for a load of coal. As soon as Tom had regained his senses his anxiety about Dick returned, and he renewed with better success his former attempt to tell what bad become of his cousin, describing so accurately the spot in which he had left him that a messenger was at once sent off with the news to the search party, which had by this time reached the foot of the ridge that had sheltered our heroes. On hearing what Tom had told, the seekers went right up the ridge with all the speed that they conld make, shouting with all their might as they went. But poor Dick was in no case to answer them, and they passed right along the edge of the very hollow in which he was lying without seeing or hearing anything of him. But just then a keen-eyed shepherd looked down into the hollow, and called out eagerly,

‘ There be some o’ yon ling as has been ploocked oop wi' hands, and ye’ll find t’ lad oonder it for a guinea.* All the rest Hew at once to the spot, and there, sure enough, they found, helpless and all but dead, the lost Dick, who, being unable to stand, was carried home in triumph. In the end, however, strange to say, neither he nor his cousin seemed to be any the worse for this terrible adventure.