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‘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.”