V
For three days now we made no expedition of any consequence. The question arises, then, what did we? I have been searching the meagre entries in my journal for an answer, with no satisfactory result. The doctrine that men should be held accountable for their days, or even their hours, is one to which the very young often subscribe as a matter of course, seeing in front of them such a long way to go and so little time: the futility of exact accounts in this sort is apparent among mountains; the span of human life appears so short as hardly to be capable of the usual subdivisions, and a much longer period than a day may be neglected as easily as a halfpenny in current expenditure; and while some hours and days are spent in doing, others pass in simply being or being evolved, a process in the mind not to be measured in terms of time. Nevertheless, it is often interesting to draft a balance-sheet covering a period of twenty-four hours or seven days if only to see how much must truthfully be set down as “unaccounted.”
In the present instance my first inclination is to write off in this bold fashion a full half of the time we spent in Camp III. But I will try to serve my accounts better cooked. The largest item in a balance of hours, even the least frank, will always be sleep. Here I prefer to make the entry under the heading Bed. This will enable me to write off at once a minimum of fourteen or a maximum of sixteen hours, leaving me only eight to ten hours to account for. It is also a simplification, because I am able by this means to avoid a doubtful and perhaps an ugly heading, Dozing. No one will ask me to describe exactly what goes on in bed. At Camp III it will be understood that supper is always included, but not breakfast, for as the breakfasting hour is the most agreeable in the day, it must be spent out-of-doors in the warm sun. Supper, unlike most activities, takes less time than in civilised life. Wasted minutes allow the food to cool and the grease to congeal. The porter serving us would not want to be standing about longer than necessary, and the whole performance was expeditious. Perhaps the fashion of eating among mountaineers is also more wolfish than among civilised men. The remaining 13½ or 14½ hours were not all spent in sleep. Probably on the night of May 13–14 I slept at least ten hours after the exertions of our ascent to the North Col. But though one sleeps well and is refreshed by sleep in a tent at an altitude to which one is sufficiently acclimatised, the outside world is not so very far away. However well accustomed to such scenes, one does not easily lose a certain excitement from the mere presence beyond the open tent-door of the silent power of frost suspending even the life of the mountains, and of the black ridges cutting the space of stars. The slow-spinning web of unconscious thought is nearer consciousness. One wakes in the early morning with the mind more definitely gathered about a subject, looks out to find the stars still bright, or dim in the first flush of dawn, and because the subject, whatever it be, and however nearly connected with the one absorbing problem, commands less concentrated attention—for the unwilled effort of the mind is more dispersed—one may often fall asleep once more and stay in a light intermittent slumber until the bright sun is up and the tent begins to be warm again. No sleeper, so far as I know on this second expedition, could compete either for quantity or quality with the sleep of Guy Bullock on the first; but all, perhaps with different habits from either his or mine, but at all events all who spent several nights at this camp or higher, slept well and were refreshed by sleep, and I hope they were no less grateful than I for those blessed nights.
Peak, 23,180 feet (Kellas’ Dark Rock Peak) from the Rongbuk Glacier above Camp II.
I often remarked during the Expedition how large a part of a day had been spent by some of us in conversation. Down at the Base Camp we would often sit on, those of us who were not expert photographers, or painters, or naturalists, sit indefinitely not only after dinner, but after each succeeding meal, talking the hours away. When a man has learned to deal firmly with an imperious conscience, he will be neither surprised nor ashamed in such circumstances to enter in his diary, “so many hours talking and listening.” It is true that conscience has the right to demand, in the case of such an entry, that the subjects talked of should also be named. But our company was able to draw upon so wide a range of experience that a fair proportion of our subjects were worth talking of. Perhaps in the higher camps there was a tendency to talk, though from less active brains, for the sake of obliterating the sense of discomfort. However, I believe that most men, once they have faced the change from armchairs and spring mattresses, and solid walls and hot baths, and drawers for their clothes and shelves for their books, do not experience discomfort in camp life except in the matter of feeding. However good your food and however well cooked, sooner or later in this sort of life meals appear messy. The most unsatisfactory circumstance of our meals at the Base Camp was the tables. In a country where wood is so difficult to obtain you cannot construct solid tables, still less can you afford to carry them. Our ingenious “X” tables had thin iron legs and canvas tops. On the rough ground they were altogether too light, too easily disturbed, and for this reason too many of our victuals erred on to these tables; their surfaces appeared under our eyes with constantly accumulating stains, but half rubbed out by a greasy rag. Efforts truly were made to control the nightly flow, proceeding from X and Y in their cups—had they been cups of beer or whisky, we might have minded little enough, but the sticky soiling mess was soup or cocoa; offenders were freely cursed; tables were scrubbed; table-cloths were produced. In the long run, no efforts availed. If the curry were tasty and the plate clean, who would complain of a dirty table-cloth at the impurification of which he had himself assisted? But I have little doubt that this circumstance, more than any gradual drift of the mountaineer back towards the Stone Age, was to be held accountable for the visible deterioration of our table manners. With no implication of insult to General Bruce and Dr. Longstaff, I record my belief that our manners at Camp III were better than those at the Base Camp. It may suggest a lower degree of civilisation that men should be seated on the ground at boxes for eating rather than on boxes at a table. On the contrary, the nice adjustment of a full plate upon one’s lap, or the finer art of conveying and forking in the mouthfuls which start so much further from the face, requires a delicacy, if it is to be accomplished at all, which continually restrains the grosser impulses. And, though it might be supposed that as we went higher up the mountain we should come to feeding entirely sans façon, it was my experience that the greater difficulties at the higher altitudes in satisfying the appetite continually promoted more civilised habits of feeding. To outward appearance, perhaps, the sight of four men each with a spoon eating out of a common saucepan of spaghetti would not be altogether reassuring. But one must not leave out of the reckoning the gourmet’s peculiar enjoyment in the steamy aroma from things cooked and eaten before any wanton hand has served them on a dish, still less the finer politeness required by several persons sharing the same pots in this manner.
On the whole, therefore, we suffered, either morally, æsthetically, or physically, little enough in the matter of meals; still less from any other cause. The bitter wind, it is true, was constantly disagreeable. But such wind deadens even the senses that dislike it, and the wind of Tibet was admirable both as an excuse for and necessary contrast with luxurious practices. Just as one most enjoys a fire when half aware of unpleasant things outside, or is most disgusted by a stuffy room after breathing the soft air of a South-west wind, so in Tibet one may delight merely in being warm anywhere. Neatly to avoid the disagreeable is in itself a keen pleasure and heightens the desire for active life. It was only rarely, very rarely, that one suffered of necessity, and generally, if a man were cold, he was himself to blame; either he had failed to put on clothes enough for the occasion, or had failed, having put them on, to stimulate circulation. In a sleeping-bag such as we had this year, with soft flannel lining the quilted eiderdown, one need not be chilled even by the coldest night; and to lie in a tent no bigger than will just hold two persons, with 20° of frost inside and 40° without, snugly defying cold and wind, to experience at once in this situation the keen bite of the air and the warm glow in one’s extremities, gives a delicious sensation of well-being and true comfort never to be so acutely provoked even in the armchair at an English fireside.
But to return to the subject from which I have naughtily digressed, time passed swiftly enough for Somervell and me at Camp III. We did not keep the ball rolling so rapidly and continuously to and fro as it was wont to roll in the united Mess; but we found plenty to say to one another, more particularly after supper, in the tent. We entered upon a serious discussion of our future prospects on Mount Everest, and were both feeling so brave and hardy after a day’s rest that we decided, if necessary, to meet the transport difficulty half-way and do without a tent in any camp we should establish above the North Col, and so reduce the burden to be carried up to Camp IV to three rather light or two rather heavy loads. Our conversation was further stimulated by two little volumes which I had brought up with me, the one Robert Bridges’ anthology, The Spirit of Man, and the other one-seventh of the complete works of William Shakespeare, including Hamlet and King Lear. It was interesting to test the choice made in answer to the old question, “What book would you take to a desert island?” though in this case it was a desert glacier, and the situation demanded rather lighter literature than prolonged edification might require on the island. The trouble about lighter literature is that it weighs heavier because more has to be provided. Neither of my books would be to every one’s taste in a camp at 21,000 feet; but The Spirit of Man read aloud now by one of us and now by the other, suggested matters undreamt of in the philosophy of Mount Everest, and enabled us to spend one evening very agreeably. On another occasion I had the good fortune to open my Shakespeare at the very place where Hamlet addresses the ghost. “Angels and Ministers of Grace defend us,” I began, and the theme was so congenial that we stumbled on enthusiastically reading the parts in turn through half the play.
Besides reading and talking, we found a number of things to do. The ordering of even so small a camp as this may occupy a good deal of attention. Stores will have to be checked and arranged in some way so as to be easily found when wanted. One article or another is sure to be missing, too often to be retrieved when it lies on the stones only after prolonged search, and even to find a strayed stocking groped for on hands and knees in the congested tent may take a considerable time. Again, the difficult and important problem of meals will have to be considered in connection with the use of available food supplies. We have one ox tongue. Shall we open it to-day, or ought we to keep it to take up with us? And so on. But with a number of details to be arranged, I was impressed not so much by the amount of energy and attention which they demanded as by the time taken to do any little thing—and most of all to write. Undoubtedly one is slower in every activity, and in none so remarkably slower as in writing. The greater part of a morning might easily be consumed in writing one letter of perhaps half a dozen pages.
In referring to my own slowness, particularly mental slowness, I must hasten to exclude my companion. His most important activity when we were not on the mountain was sketching. His vast supply of energy, the number of sketches he produced, and oil-paintings besides, was only less remarkable than the rapidity with which he worked. On May 14 he again walked over the uncrevassed snowfield by himself to the Rapiu La. Later on I joined him, and, so far as I could judge, his talent and energy were no less at 21,000 feet than on the wind-swept plains of Tibet.