The Birth of an Avalanche
When we had got to 23,000 feet, my nose, too, [[85]]bled like a fountain, and I could not stop the flow, but, contrary to my expectation, it seemed to cause me relief rather than discomfort. I could breathe more freely, and my heart did not beat in such a reckless manner as before. It caused me a slight pain and pressure on the top of the skull, but nowhere else.
Of course the exhaustion was indescribable. It was all one could do to go four or five yards at a time, although the ascent after a certain point was in no way difficult, because on looking at the mountain I had instinctively chosen the easiest way to go up. One panted so convulsively and the heart beat so hard and quick that it rather made one reflect.
Possibly the most trying consequence of travelling so high up was the weight which one’s limbs seemed to assume. One hardly had the strength to lift them up. The effort of moving one’s legs in succession three or four times exhausted one temporarily as much as if one had walked thirty miles under ordinary circumstances.
Well, on we struggled, with an occasional grin at our plight. The last few hundred feet of our ascent were indeed hard work.
One of my men, the strongest-looking lad in my [[86]]party, who had been panting most terribly and gasping for breath, unluckily burst a blood-vessel when we were within a few feet of the top. He was in intense pain. We screened him in a sheltered nook. He suffered very much, poor fellow, and although on our return we brought him down again, he eventually died.
A Perilous Crossing
At last we reached the summit—23,490 feet (measured by me with the hypsometrical apparatus with three different boiling-point thermometers checked at the Kew Observatory before my departure and after my return. Two excellent aneroids which I also carried gave a similar figure within a few feet).