Preparation for what we intended to attempt was not to be made without some thought, or at all events I do not find such preparation a perfectly simple matter. It requires exact calculation. The first thing is to make a list—in this case a list of all we should require at Camp IV, with the approximate weights of each article. But not every article would be available to be carried up on the first of the two journeys to the North Col; for instance, we must keep our sleeping-bags for use at Camp III until we moved up ourselves. It was necessary, therefore, to mark off certain things to be left for the second journey, and to ascertain that not more than half of the whole was so reserved. It might be supposed that the problem could now be solved by adding up the weights, dividing the total by ten (the number of our porters), and giving so many pounds, according to this arithmetical answer, to each man for the first journey. In practice this cannot be done, and we have to allow for the fallibility of human lists. However carefully you have gone over in your mind and provided for every contingency, you may be quite sure you have omitted something, probably some property of the porters regarded by them as necessary to salvation, and at the last moment it will turn up. The danger is that one or two men will be seriously overloaded, and perhaps without your knowing it. To circumvent it, allowance must be made in your calculations. On this occasion we took good care to carry up more than half of what was shown on our list on the first journey. Another difficulty in the mathematical solution is the nature of the loads. They cannot be all exactly equal, because they are composed of indivisible objects. A tent cannot be treated like a vulgar fraction. The best plan, therefore, is to fix a maximum. We intended our loads to be from 25 to 30 lb. They were all weighed with a spring balance, and the upper limit was only exceeded by a pound or two in two cases, to the best of my remembrance.
On May 17 the fifteen of us, Strutt, Morshead, Norton, Somervell, and I, with ten porters, set off for Camp IV. The snow was in good condition, we had our old tracks to tread in, and the only mishap to be feared was the possible exhaustion of one or more porters. It was necessary that all the loads should reach their destination to-day; but the five climbers were comparatively unladen, and constituted a reserve of power. My recollections of going up to the North Col are all of a performance rather wearisome and dazed, of a mind incapable of acute perceptions faintly stirring the drowsy senses to take notice within a circle of limited radius. The heat and glare of the morning sun as it blazed on the windless long slopes emphasised the monotony. I was dimly aware of this puzzling question of light-rays and the harm they might do. I was glad I wore two felt hats, and that Strutt and Somervell had their solar topis. Morshead and Norton had no special protection, and the porters none at all. What did it matter? Seemingly nothing. We plodded on and slowly upwards; each of us was content to go as slowly as anyone else might wish to go. The porters were more silent than usual. They were strung up to the effort required of them. No one was going to give in. The end was certain. At length our success was duly epitomised. As he struggled up the final slope, Strutt broke into gasping speech: “I wish that—cinema were here. If I look anything like what I feel, I ought to be immortalised for the British public.” We looked at his grease-smeared, yellow-ashen face, and the reply was: “Well, what in Heaven’s name do we look like? And what do we do it for, anyway?”
At all events, we had some reason to feel hopeful on our subsequent day’s rest, May 18. Somervell more particularly pronounced that his second journey to Camp IV had been much less fatiguing than the first. I was able to say the same, though I felt that a sufficient reason was to be found in the fact that far less labour had been required of me. It was more remarkable, perhaps, that those who went for the first time to 23,000 feet, and especially the laden men, should have shown so much endurance.
On May 19 we carried up the remainder of our loads. And again we seemed better acclimatised. The ascent to the North Col was generally felt to be easier on this day; we had strength to spare when we reached the shelf. With all our loads now gathered about us at Camp IV, the first stage up from the base of the mountain was accomplished. To-morrow, we hoped, would complete the second. The five light tents were gradually pitched, two of them destined for the climbers a few yards apart towards the North Peak, the remaining three to accommodate each three porters in the same alignment; in all, a neat little row showing green against the white. The even surface of the snow was further disturbed by the muddled tracks, soon to be a trampled space about the tent-doors. For the safety of sleep-walkers, or any other who might feel disposed to take a walk in the night, these tent-doors faced inwards, toward the back of the shelf. There the gigantic blocks of ice were darker than the snow on which their deep shadow was thrown. Their cleft surfaces suggested cold colours, and were green and blue as the ocean is on some winter’s day of swelling seas—a strange impressive rampart impregnable against direct assault, and equally well placed to be the final defence of the North Col on this section, and at the same time to protect us amazingly, entirely, against the unfriendly wind from the West.
Other activities besides demanded our attention. It had been resolved that one more rope should be fixed on the steep slope we must follow to circumvent the ice-cliffs. Morshead and Somervell volunteered for this good work; Norton and I were left to tend the cooking-pots. As we had not burdened the porters with a large supply of water, we had now to make provision both for this evening and for to-morrow morning. The Primus stoves remained at Camp III, partly because they were heavy and partly because, however carefully devised, their performance at a high altitude must always be a little uncertain. They had served us well up to 21,000 feet, and we had no need to trust them further. With our aluminium cooking sets we could use either absolute alcohol in the spirit-burner or “Meta,” a French sort of solidified spirit, especially prepared in cylindrical shape and extremely efficient; you have only to put a match to the dry white cylinders and they burn without any trouble, and smokelessly, even at 23,000 feet, for not less than forty minutes. The supply of “Meta” was not very large, and it was considered rather as an emergency fuel. The alcohol was to do most of our heating at Camp IV, and all too rapidly it seemed to burn away as we kept filling and refilling our pots with snow. In the end six large thermos flasks were filled with tea or water for the use of all in the morning, and we had enough for our present needs besides.
Morshead and Somervell had not long returned, after duly fixing the rope, before our meal was ready. As I have already referred to our table manners, the more delicate-minded among my readers may not relish the spectacle of us four feasting around our cooking-pots—in which case I caution them to omit this paragraph, for now, living up to my own standard of faithful narrative, I must honestly and courageously face the subject of victuals. As mankind is agreed that the pleasures of the senses, when it is impossible they should be actually experienced, can most nearly be tasted by exercising an artistic faculty in choosing the dishes of imaginary repasts, so it might be supposed that the state of affairs, when those pleasures were thousands of feet below in other worlds, might more easily be brought to mind by reconstructing the associated menus. But such a practice was unfortunately out of the question, for it would have involved assigning this, that, and the other to breakfast, lunch, and supper; and when, calling to mind what we ate, I try to distinguish between one meal and another, I am altogether at a loss. I can only suppose they were interchangeable. The nature of our supplies confirms my belief that this was the case. Practically speaking, we hardly considered by which name our meal should be called, but only what would seem nice to eat or convenient to produce, when we next wanted food and drink. Among the supplies I classify some as “standard pattern”—such things as we knew were always to be had in abundance, the “pièce,” as it were, of our whole ménage—three solid foods, two liquid foods, and one stimulant.
The stimulant, in the first place, as long as we remained at Camp III, was amazingly satisfactory, both for its kind, its quality, and especially for its abundance. We took it shamelessly before breakfast, and at breakfast again; occasionally with or after lunch, and most usually a little time before supper, when it was known as afternoon tea. The longer we stayed at this camp, the deeper were our potations. So good was the tea that I came almost to disregard the objectionable flavour of tinned milk in it. I had always supposed that General Bruce would keep a special herd of yaks at the Base Camp for the provision of fresh milk; but this scheme was hardly practicable, for the only grass at the Base Camp, grew under canvas, and no one suggested sharing his tent with a yak. The one trouble about our stimulant was its scarcity as we proceeded up the mountain. It diminished instead of increasing to the climax where it was needed most. Fortunately, the lower temperatures at which water boils as the atmospheric pressure diminishes made no appreciable difference to the quality, and the difficulty of melting snow enough to fill our saucepans with water was set off to some extent by increasing the quantity of tea-leaves.
The two liquid foods, cocoa and pea-soup, though not imbibed so plentifully as tea, were considered no less as the natural and fitting companions of meat on any and every occasion. At Camp III it was not unusual to begin supper with pea-soup and end it with cocoa, but such a custom by no means precluded their use at other times. Cocoa tended to fall in my esteem, though it never lost a certain popularity. Pea-soup, on the other hand, had a growing reputation, and, from being considered an accessory, came to be regarded as a principal. However, before I describe its dominating influence in the whole matter of diet, I must mention the solid foods. The three of “standard pattern” were ration biscuits, ham, and cheese. It was no misfortune to find above the Base Camp that we had left the region of fancy breads; for while the chupatis and scones, baked by our cooks with such surprising skill and energy, were usually palatable, they were probably more difficult of digestion than the biscuits, and our appetite for these hard wholemeal biscuits increased as we went upwards, possibly to the detriment of teeth, which became ever more brittle. Ham, of all foods, was the most generally acceptable. The quality of our “Hunter’s hams” left nothing to be desired, and the supply, apparently, was inexhaustible. A slice of ham, or several slices, either cold or fried, was fit food for any and almost every meal. The cheese supplied for our use at these higher camps, and for expeditions on the mountains besides, were always delicious and freely eaten. We had also a considerable variety of other tinned foods. Harris’s sausages, sardines, herrings, sliced bacon, soups, ox tongues, green vegetables, both peas and beans, all these I remember in general use at Camp III. We were never short of jam and chocolate. As luxuries we had “quails in truffles,” besides various sweet-stuffs, such as mixed biscuits, acid drops, crystallized ginger, figs and prunes (I feel greedy again as I name them), and, reserved more or less for use at the highest camps, Heinz’s spaghetti. More important, perhaps, than any of these was “Army and Navy Rations,” from the special use we made of it. I never quite made out what these tins contained; they were designed to be, when heated up, a rich stew of mutton or beef, or both. They were used by us to enrich a stew which was the peculiar invention of Morshead. He called it “hoosch.” Like a trained chef, he was well aware that “the foundation of good cooking is the stock-pot.” But such a maxim was decidedly depressing under our circumstances. Instead of accepting and regretting our want of a “stock-pot,” Morshead, with the true genius that penetrates to the inward truth, devised a substitute and improved the motto: “The foundation of every dish must be pea-soup.” Or if these were not his very words, it was easy to deduce that they contained the substance of his culinary thoughts. It was a corollary of this axiom that any and every available solid food might be used to stew with pea-soup. The process of selection tended to emphasise the merits of some as compared with other solids until it became almost a custom, sadly to the limitation of Morshead’s art, to prefer to “sliced bacon,” or even sausages, for the flotsam and jetsam of “hoosch,” Army and Navy Rations. It was “hoosch” that we ate at Camp IV, about the hour of an early afternoon tea on May 19.
We had hardly finished eating and washing up—it was a point of honour to wash up, and much may be achieved with snow—when the shadow crept over our tents and the chill of evening was upon us. We lingered a little after everything was set in order to look out over the still sunlit slopes of Mount Everest between us and the Rapiu La, and over the undulating basin of snow towards the Lhakpa La and Camp IV, and to pass some cheerful remarks with the porters, already seeking shelter, before turning in ourselves for the night. It had been, so far as we could tell, a singularly windless day. Such clouds as we had observed were seemingly innocent; and now, as darkness deepened, it was a fine night. The flaps of our two tents were still reefed back so as to admit a free supply of air, poor and thin in quality but still recognisable as fresh air; Norton and I and, I believe, Morshead and Somervell also lay with our heads towards the door, and, peering out from the mouths of our eiderdown bags, could see the crest above us sharply defined. The signs were favourable. We had the best omen a mountaineer can look for, the palpitating fire, to use Mr. Santayana’s words, of many stars in a black sky. I wonder what the others were thinking of between the intervals of light slumber. I daresay none of us troubled to inform himself that this was the vigil of our great adventure, but I remember how my mind kept wandering over the various details of our preparations without anxiety, rather like God after the Creation seeing that it was good. It was good. And the best of it was what we expected to be doing these next two days. As the mind swung in its dreamy circle it kept passing and repassing the highest point, always passing through the details to their intention. The prospects emerging from this mental movement, unwilled and intermittent and yet continually charged with fresh momentum, were wonderfully, surprisingly bright, already better than I had dared to expect. Here were the four of us fit and happy, to all appearances as we should expect to be in a snug alpine hut after a proper nightcap of whisky punch. We had confidence in our porters, nine strong men willing and even keen to do whatever should be asked of them; surely these men were fit for anything. And we planned to lighten their burdens as far as possible; only four loads, beyond the warm things which each of us would carry for himself, were to go on to our next camp—two tents weighing each 15 lb., two double sleeping-bags, and provisions for a day and a half besides the minimum of feeding utensils. The loads would not exceed 20 lb. each, and we should have two men to one load, and even so a man in reserve. To provide a considerable excess of porters had for long been a favourite scheme of mine. I saw no other way of making sure that all the loads would reach their destination. As it was, we should start with the knowledge that so soon as any man at any moment felt the strain too great he could be relieved of his load, and when he in his turn required to be relieved the other would presumably be ready to take up his load again. Proceeding in this way we should be free of all anxiety lest one of the loads should be left on the mountain-side or else put on to a climber’s back, with the chance of impairing his strength for the final assault. Ceteris paribus, we were going to succeed at least in establishing another camp. This was no mere hope wherein judgment was sacrificed to promote the lesser courage of optimism, but a reasonable conviction. It remained but to ask, Would the Fates be kind?