Nobody was there to see him, to say a heartening word. This was something to be settled between him and himself.
He slipped the loop over his head and sat still for a moment, holding it. Then he untied it. A doubled rope would make more difficult what he had to do. He gave himself a short lecture on Centres of Gravity. After all, he told himself yet again, while he sat there and did not look down he was as safe without the rope as with it. And suddenly his mind was made up, and the thing seemed almost easy. He worked himself right up against the sheep and leaned sideways over it, his right hand at the back of the ledge between sheep and rock, while with his left he worked the rope in from outside under that wet, grey wool, those sharp bones. He felt a feeble fluttering against his fingers, a quick, weak, terrified heart-beat. The sheep made a desperate effort to move. Were they going to the bottom together? But it had no strength left, and its head dropped flat on the ledge. Another six inches to go, another four. Horrible how this wet wool clung and grappled as he worked the rope under it. At last. His right hand in there, close against the wall of rock, felt the rope touch it. He spared a thumb to hold it. He worked his left hand out again. He was already far too near the edge. His hand was free. He gripped the ledge again, and pushed himself back into a safe position. That was better. Then, inch by inch, he worked the rope through under the sheep until he had enough to knot it round the body. What sort of knot ought it to be, and how should it be made? He envied those others who seemed to know all the knots there are. Well, never mind. The sheep would not have far to go. It did not matter what knot he used so long as it held. He did the best he could.
“Pull in a bit now,” he called to the others who were up there breathlessly waiting for news of him. “Pull in a bit. Then I’ll push the sheep off and you can lower it down.”
He remembered then that, after the sheep was lowered, one of the others would have to go all the way back and down into the gully to untie it before they could let him have the rope for the return journey. All that time he would have to sit on the ledge there, with his back against the face of the rock, and wait, and wait, and not look down at his feet. Well, those buzzards were still there.
And then, suddenly, he was startled by a shout from Roger, out of sight above him.
“Here come the dogs!”
And away to the left, far below him, he saw the sledge party coming up the gully, and knew that they had seen him.
John would be there to undo the sheep. It was too late now to try again, but he did wish he had been able to manage a rather more seamanlike knot.
CHAPTER XII
AMBULANCE WORK
THE sledge party had travelled far before thinking again of those four tired dogs who had so gaily proposed to lead the way for them. Then, on the top of a rise, they had stopped to rest, and Susan had served out a ration of chocolate, putting aside four shares for the others to have as soon as they should come up. But there were no signs of them on the great rolling sheet of snow.
“They must be in one of the dips,” said Peggy.
They waited more than long enough for the others to come up into sight again out of even the deepest of the dips, and then Susan began to be worried.
“Let’s go back and look for them,” she said. “Hiding somewhere. They never will remember how short the days are.”
“Bother those brats,” said Peggy.
“I’ll go and hurry them up,” said John.
“I’m coming too,” said Susan.
“What about the sledge?” said Peggy.
They had all but decided to leave it where it was, but, at the last minute, Susan remembered how Roger had sprained his ankle on the moor above Swallowdale on the other side of the lake. If anything like that had happened, the sledge would be badly wanted for the wounded. John agreed. They brought the sledge back with them, following their own tracks in the snow until with great indignation they came to the place where they had left the others and saw their footprints going off towards the crags. Broken ankles seemed now more likely than ever. They pulled the sledge behind them, following the footprints up the gully until suddenly they caught sight of Titty, Roger, and Dorothea, high on the ridge, standing in the snow above a grey precipice of rock.
“They’re not fit to be left alone for a minute,” said Susan, relieved all the same to see Titty and Roger still clearly able to stand on two legs apiece.
“But there’s only three of them,” said John.
And then they saw that the others were holding a rope that hung down the cliff. They saw Dick high up there against the rock, and they guessed that something horrible had happened, and fairly raced up the gully.
“Don’t shout,” said John suddenly. “Don’t startle him. I don’t believe he’s got hold of the rope. They’re trying to give it him.”
A moment later they had seen the sheep, and understood what was going on.
“Cragfast sheep,” said Peggy eagerly. “Good for them! Whoever it belongs to’ll be jolly pleased.”
“Look here,” said John, “they’ll never manage the weight.”
But as he spoke the rope tautened.
“Pull in just a bit more,” called Dick.
The three above hauled in, and the sheep lifted like a dead thing, a limp, sagging bundle. Dick pushed it outwards.
“Let it down now,” he shouted.
“Lower away,” said Titty, in command on the top of the cliff. With their feet well dug into the snow, they let the rope go slowly down, hand over hand. Roger and Titty had been busy for some time, showing Dorothea how to do it. They could see nothing of what was happening on the face of the rock below them. They never knew how nearly the swinging sheep, slipping down against Dick’s legs, had come to dragging him feet foremost from his perch. The sledge party, down below, had seen clearly enough. John had started at the run, meaning to come round and up to the top to help with the rope, but when he saw that the sheep was on its way down he turned back and hurried up the screes to be ready for it. The sheep weighed so little that they had no trouble in lowering it, and Dick, after that one desperate moment, had got his legs free and jerked himself safely back on the ledge as the sheep went down.
“LOWER AWAY”
John said nothing about Dick’s knot, but simply untied it, and, when Peggy had taken the sheep, made a new bowline loop at the end of the rope.
Peggy was sitting on the screes with the sheep in her arms. “It’s still alive,” she said.
“How is he going to get down?” said Susan, still looking up at Dick, who, sitting seemingly on nothing at all, was looking far away towards the top of the crags.
“I can wriggle back all right,” said Dick, “but perhaps I’d better wait for the rope.” He did not look down as he spoke. He had looked down and seen the sheep reach the ground, and felt himself giddy once more. Buzzards were the things for him to look at.
“You stay where you are,” said John. “It’ll take ages wriggling back. Just wait till I get up to the top, and we’ll lower you down in two shakes.” He raced off down the gully to look for the nearest place where he could climb up and join the others.
A very few minutes later they were ready. Susan had swung the rope till Dick could reach it. He had worked the loop over his feet, so that he was all but sitting in it. John had hauled up the slack.
“Are you all right?” called John.
“Yes,” said Dick. “Shall I put my weight on it?”
“Half a minute.” John took his coat off, crawled to the edge of the cliff, spread his coat on an overhanging clump of heather, and led the rope across it so that it should not fray. He went back to the others, and took a good grip.
“Ready now.”
Dick took a gulp of air, because, no matter how sure you may be scientifically that your Centre of Gravity is in the right place and that the rope is strong, it is not easy to launch yourself down even a very little precipice. His hands were cold, too, and he was very wet from sitting on the icy ledge.
B
ut there were Susan and Peggy watching below, and all the rest of the expedition waiting for him, and Dorothea . . .
“Now,” he called.
“Go ahead.”
He was off the ledge and swinging, sitting in the loop, hanging on to the rope with both hands and bumping against the rock. This was horrible. Well, he must think of something else. Buzzards. And the others, waiting below, were astonished to see that, instead of looking down towards them, he still looked up towards the crags. And at this very moment he had his reward. Inch by inch, foot by foot, he was going down. There could be no wriggling back to safety on the ledge, or to get a better view. But he had seen it. Buzzards. How odd that they choose a rocky crag for their home, and yet use sticks for their building. But it was a nest. He was sure of it. First one and then the other bird had rested in that place, and how else could the sticks he saw up there have found their way to the top of the crag? Hullo. What was that catching at his foot?
“Well done,” said Peggy. “Jolly good work. And the sheep’s still alive. We may be in time to save it, but it’s pretty bad.”
“You’ll have to change the moment you get home,” said Susan. “You’re wet through with sitting up there.”
“What sort of nests do buzzards make?” he asked.
“Buzzards?” said Peggy. “Any old sticks.”
“Good,” said Dick, “I thought it was, but I couldn’t be absolutely sure.” He pulled out his pocket-book, blew on his frozen fingers, and, with a pencil that would hardly do what he wanted, scrawled “Saw buzzard’s nest,” and the date.
“Heads,” called John from above, and the end of the rope came flying. The four on the top of the cliff hurried down into the gully by the way they had left it. In a few minutes the whole expedition was standing round the rescued sheep.
“It’s starving,” said Peggy. “It may have been stuck there for days.”
“Let’s give it something to eat,” said Roger.
Titty scraped in the snow at the bottom of the gully and found a little short grass, but the sheep did not try to nibble it, and would not open its mouth even when Roger tried to tempt it with a bit of strengthening chocolate taken from his own share.
“The farmers would give it warm milk,” said Peggy.
“We haven’t got any,” said Susan.
“Why did you say it belonged to Mr Dixon?” asked Dorothea.
Dick, now that the rescue was over, was thinking entirely about birds of prey: buzzards, vultures, eagles, and their choice of nests. But Dorothea’s question woke him. “Because it is,” he said. “It’s got the red patch on its left shoulder, and that’s Mr Dixon’s mark. I asked him about it when I saw it on all the sheep down in the field.”
“We’d better take it back to him as quick as we can,” said John. “Lucky we’ve got that sledge.”
“We’ll bump it to death if we try taking it down the way we came up,” said Susan.
“There’s a much better way,” said Peggy. “We’ll get down to the road through that wood where you saw the charcoal-burners that first summer. It’s not far from here. There’s a good track down the wood, and once we’re on the road by the lake we’ll be at Dixon’s in no time.”
They shifted the knapsacks and, with the coiled Alpine rope for a mattress, made the sledge into a comfortable litter. Peggy, Susan, and John between them, with Roger actively helping, arranged the sheep on the top.
“Those brats had better get properly warm again,” said Susan. “Let them pull for a bit.”
John fixed the ends of the long coil of rope (which nobody wanted to cut), so that people would be able to hang on to them or pull if necessary. The four younger dogs were already getting into the harness. In a very few minutes they were off, down the gully, back to the place at which the four of them had begun exploring on their own, then along the tracks made by their elders, and at last cutting off from those tracks to the right. There, where the white of the fells was broken by the browns and greys of leafless trees, must be the wood they wanted.
“It’s a queer sort of crossing of Greenland,” said Peggy, Who was keeping close by the sledge, “coming back with a sick sheep.”
“Count it a Polar bear,” said Titty.
“It’s not half a bad one,” said Roger, “but, of course, there isn’t any blood.”
“I did see that nest all right,” said Dick to Dorothea, as they trotted side by side, once more a pair of hard-working dogs.
“I am glad,” said Dorothea; “I really am.” After all, it had been Dick who had gone out along the ledge and rescued the sheep, even before the elders had come to help. It had been quite like a bit out of a real story, and though Dick’s mind would keep running on buzzards instead of on Polar bears, she could not help feeling he had done very well. He deserved his buzzards.
Long before they reached the top of the wood they saw that it was divided from the fell by a stone wall with a gate in it. They made straight for the gate, and found, as they had guessed, a cart track going through it and down among the trees. They ran at full speed down that winding track, with the elders hanging back on the spare ropes to keep the sledge from going too fast.
The track came out in a white clearing where there was a sort of hut or wigwam built of larch poles, all sloping up to a point at the top of it.
“I wonder where the Billies are now,” said Titty.
“Who are they?” said Dorothea.
“Charcoal-burners,” said Titty.
“It wouldn’t make half a bad igloo,” said John, looking at the hut the charcoal-burners had left.
“Not as good as our own,” said Peggy. “But we might use it some time.”
“We mustn’t stop now,” said Susan, seeing that some of the dogs were thinking of looking inside it. “Dick’s awfully wet, and we may be too late with the sheep.”
“Polar bear,” said Roger.
So they hurried on, out of the clearing and down the steep track towards the lake.
“That’s where we turned off last time,” said Titty. “I made a blaze on a tree. It’s probably still there.”
But today there was no stopping to look, and no turning off. Slipping and stumbling, picking themselves up and stumbling again, holding back the runaway sledge, they hurried down the old track until it ended in a gap where once upon a time there had been a gate between the wood and the road.
“Now then,” said John, as they turned northwards in the road.
“Come on,” said Peggy.
They fairly raced along the road, a full dog team of six, the four smaller dogs, Dorothea, Dick, Titty, and Roger taking short turns to rest on the sledge one at a time, and to look after the Polar bear, which, for its part, had never travelled so fast in its life, but was not enough alive to know anything about it. After they left High Greenland it seemed almost no time before they were turning into the farmyard.
“It’s a near thing,” said old Silas, who had been crossing the yard with a barrow and, after calling for Mr Dixon to help, had taken charge of the Polar bear the moment he saw it on the sledge. “Another night, and she’d have been a goner.”
He asked a few questions from Peggy, who explained just where the Polar bear had been found. “And how in ever did you get her down out of that?”
“Dick did it,” said Titty, who, after all, had led the part of the expedition that had done the actual rescuing. “He crawled along the ledge and we went along the top.”
“It’s not the first sheep to come cragfast just there,” said Silas, “but it’s a bad spot that to get them out of without men and ropes.”
“We had a rope,” said Titty, “and Dick went right along the ledge and tied it to the sheep. And then we lowered it down.”
“Well, I’m beholden to you all,” said Mr Dixon at last. “There’s not many lads would go along that ledge.”
And then Mrs Dixon came bustling out into the yard, and in three-quarters of a minute Dick was flying upstairs to get out of his wet clothes. “Freez
ing on him,” said Mrs Dixon. “Arctic, indeed. He’ll have had more’n enough of Arctic if he stands about there in wet breeches watching you doctor a sick sheep. We’ll be having doctor here for something more’n mumps. Nay now, Miss Peggy, you’ve no call to be stirring yet. You’ve done a good job to-day bringing that sheep home for Dixon, and the lad’ll be into dry clothes and down by the fire in two jumps. I’ve a rare baking of cakes, and there’ll be trouble if all the lot of you aren’t sitting down to see what’s inside them. It’s nigh teatime, and kettle’s boiling, and if you’re a bit late to Jackson’s, Silas’ll set you along the road with a lantern. You’ve no call to stir now till dark.”
At tea in the farm kitchen, with Mrs Dixon seeing to it that everybody was eating as hard as anybody could, while Mr Dixon and Silas drank their tea and said hardly a word between them, the whole story of the Greenland expedition was told, and of how they had taken turns in pulling the sledge because there was only one, as Dorothea and Dick had none of their own, and of how the four young ones had gone off by themselves to have a nearer look at the buzzards, and then of exactly how the sheep had been seen and rescued. Peggy told most of the story, and Titty the rest, though neither of them had seen the worst part, when Dick had had to work his way along, sitting on the ledge, under the overhanging rock.
Mr Dixon sat by the fireside, drank his tea out of a huge mug, and listened. But when he had gone back across the yard to the shippen, to see that the sheep was doing nicely, he had a good look at the sledge that had carried it. He stood it up on end, to see how it was built underneath. He scraped the snow from its runners. Silas stood with him.