Gents Mag 1902 part 2 p.422

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	Gentleman's Magazine 1902 part 2 p.422 With their backs against the wall of rock, the climbers were looking at a distant patch of sunlit cloud over Kidsty Pike when from the west, black as the smoke from a manufacturing city, dropped a cloud of rain. Thunder in magnificent melody roared, boomed, sang, and rattled; lightning clove the semi-darkness with fitful gleams; the rills and gullies continued and intensified the blast till fell and dale, tarn and sky seemed in the very climax of an exterminating war. There was now no time to be lost if the climbers were to reach safety at all; for the heavy rain descending would soon fill the tiny channel up which they must escape. Six hundred feet of sheer cliff below, thousands of tons of rock above, each threatened in vain direst vengeance upon the pair crawling between. The rock shelved outward and upward, and this characteristic saved them. It was a wearying climb; the water, in ever increasing volume, oozed through their clothes and lapped their faces when at particularly narrow corners their bodies dammed it back, but at length Bate reached the head of the semi-tunnel and found himself in a very steep and rough gorge, Graves had not followed him closely, for if the track had proved useless such action would have created a nasty position. The summit could hardly be more than two hundred feet above, and the edge of a cliff is usually so weather-worn that its ascent is not difficult, though the crumbling nature of the rock makes it extremely dangerous. Bate gave a whistle for his companion to finish cimbing the hollow way, and and a judicious strain on the rope helped him to do so. A stream of blue fire flickered from a low-flying cloud and struck the rugged crag above their heads. Ten thousand tons of shale, felspar, and slate crumbled away, and parted with a terrible crash from its base.The ghyll in which Bate was standing was swept by an avalanche of scree, and when it cleared a bleeding, crushed body jammed in a crack showed that some fragment had struck home a fearful blow. Graves was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he was crushed under the mighty weight, perhaps hurled among the falling rock into the tarn. High up beyond the range of human sight the battered form still breathed. No one came to succour as evening died among the crags and slopes - in these localities a rock-fall is not so extraordinary as to invite minute exploration. The quietude of night passed, daybreak and broad day came. The body still breathed, though it did not move. Would another be added to the ghastly tale of skeletons lying on the moors and cliffs? Day blazed to its
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