It must not be forgotten that we had just come through a trying ordeal. Nothing is more demoralising than a severe wind, and it may be that our morale was affected. But I don’t think we were demoralised, or not in any degree so as to affect our judgment. The impression I retain from that remote scene where we sat perched in discussion crowding under a bluff of rocks is of a party well pleased with their performance, rejoicing to be sheltered from the wind, and every one of them quite game to go higher. Perhaps the deciding influence was the weather. A mountaineer judges of the weather conditions almost by instinct; and apart from our experience of the wind, which had already been sufficiently menacing, we knew, so far as such things can be known, that the weather would get worse before it got better. But we could not imagine what might be coming without thinking definitely about the porters. It would be their lot, wherever our new camp was fixed, to return this same day to Camp IV. It was no part of our design to risk even the extremities of their limbs, let alone their lives; apart from any consideration of ethics it would not be sensible; no one supposed that this attempt on Mount Everest would be the last of the season, even for ourselves, and if the porters who first completed this stage were to suffer nothing worse than severe frostbite the moral effect of that injury alone might be an irreparable disaster. The porters must be sent down before the weather grew worse, and the less they were exposed to the cold wind the better. It was 12.30 p.m. before the stragglers who had joined us had rested sufficiently to go on. To fix a camp 1,000 feet higher would probably require, granted reasonably good fortune in finding a site, another three hours; and if snow began to fall or the ridge were enveloped in mist it would be necessary to provide an escort for the porters. Had we supposed a place might be found anywhere above us within range on this lee-side of the ridge, we might conceivably have accepted these hard conditions and pushed on. Deliberately to choose a site on the ridge with such a wind blowing and in defiance of every threat in the sky was a folly not to be contemplated, and our suppositions as to the lee side above us (they were afterwards proved correct) were all unfavourable to going higher. The plan of encamping somewhere near at hand, not lower than 25,000 feet, still left plenty to hope for this time besides building the best foundation for a second attempt. In my opinion no other alternative was sanely practicable; and I believe this conviction was shared by all when at length we left our niche, having conceded so much already to the mountain.
As the broken ledges we now followed presented no special difficulties the party was able to explore more than one level in search of some place sufficiently flat and sufficiently commodious. The nature of the ground and the presence of cloud, though we were never thickly enveloped, prevented any sort of extensive view. Many suggestions were mooted and rejected; a considerable time elapsed and still we had found no site that would serve. At about 2 p.m. Somervell and some porters shouted the news that one tent could be pitched in the place where they were. On the far side of a defined rib slanting up to the ridge we had left they had discovered some sort of a platform. It was evident that work would be required to extend and prepare it for the tent, and they at once set about building a supporting wall and levelling the ground. It remained to find a place near at hand for the other tent. We could see no obvious shelf, but the constructional works undertaken by Somervell seemed to contain such a promising idea that Norton and I in separate places each started works of our own. Each of us very soon reached the same conclusion, that nothing could be done where he was. We moved away and tried again; but always with the same result; the ground was everywhere too steep and too insecure. One soon tires of heaving up big stones when no useful end is served. Eventually coming together, we resolved to agree on the least unlikely site and make the best of it. We chose the foot of a long sloping slab—at all events it was part of the mountain and would not budge—and there built up the ground below it with some fine stones we found to hand. Our tent was pitched at last with one side of the floor lying along the foot of the sloping slab and the other half on the platform we had made. It was not a situation that promised for either of us a bountiful repose, for one would be obliged to lie along the slope and the only check to his tendency to slip down would be the body of the other. However, there it was, a little tent making a gallant effort to hold itself proudly and well.
Before we had concluded these operations the porters had been sent down about 3 p.m. and kitchen had been instituted, and a meal was already being prepared. Presumably because their single tent would have to accommodate the four of us (ours was too far away), when we set ourselves down to eat and be warm, Somervell and Morshead had arranged the kitchen outside it. Somervell had appointed himself chief in this department and it remained only for the rest of us to offer menial service. But so great had been his energy and perseverance, sheltering the flame from the cold draught and by every device encouraging the snow to melt, that almost all such offers were rejected. Like a famous pretender, I would have gladly been a scullion, but I was allowed only to open one or two tins and fill up a pot with snow. I have no recollection of what we ate; I remember only a hot and stimulating drink, Brand’s essence or bovril or something of the sort. We did not linger long over this meal. We wanted to go to bed still warm. Norton and I soon left the others in possession of their tent and began to make our dispositions for the night.
To the civilised man who gets into bed after the customary routine, tucks himself in, lays his head on the pillow, and presently goes to sleep with no further worry, the dispositions in a climber’s tent may seem to be strangely intricate. In the first place, he has to arrange about his boots. He looks forward to the time when he will have to start next morning, if possible with warm feet and in boots not altogether frozen stiff. He may choose to go to bed in his boots, not altogether approving the practice, and resolving that the habit shall not be allowed to grow upon him. If his feet are already warm when he turns in, it may be that he can do no better; his feet will probably keep warm in the sleeping-bag if he wears his bed-socks over his boots, and he will not have to endure the pains of pulling on and wearing frozen boots in the morning. At this camp I adopted a different plan—to wear moccasins instead of boots during the night and keep them on until the last moment before starting. But if one takes his boots off, where is he to keep them warm? Climbing boots are not good to cuddle, and in any case there will be no room for them with two now inside a double sleeping-bag. My boots were happily accommodated in a rucksack and I put them under my head for a pillow. It is not often that one uses the head for warming things, and no one would suspect one of a hot head; nevertheless my boots were kept warm enough and were scarcely frozen in the morning.
It was all-important besides to make ourselves really comfortable, if we were to get to sleep, by making experiments in the disposition of limbs, adjusting the floor if possible and arranging one’s pillow at exactly the right level—which may be difficult, as the pillow should be high if one is to breathe easily at a great altitude. I had already found out exactly how to be comfortable before Norton was ready to share the accommodation. I remarked that in our double sleeping-bag I found ample room for myself but not much to spare. Norton’s entrance was a grievous disturbance. It was doubtful for some time whether he would be able to enter; considering how long and slim he is, it is astonishing how much room he requires. We were so tightly pressed together that if either was to move a corresponding manœuvre was required of the other. I soon discovered, as the chief item of interest in the place where I lay, a certain boulder obstinately immovable and excruciatingly sharp which came up between my shoulder-blades. How under these circumstances we achieved sleep, and I believe that both of us were sometimes unconscious in a sort of light, intermittent slumber, I cannot attempt to explain. Perhaps the fact that one was often breathless from the exhaustion of discomfort, and was obliged to breathe deeply, helped one to sleep, as deep breathing often will. Perhaps the necessity of lying still because it was so difficult to move was good for us in the end. Norton’s case was worse than mine. One of his ears had been severely frostbitten on the way up; only one side was available to lie on; and yet the blessed sleep we sometimes sigh for in easy beds at home visited him too.
The party had suffered more than at first we realized from exposure in the wind on the way up. The damage to Norton’s ear was not all. I noticed when my hands got warm in bed that three finger-tips appeared to be badly bruised; the symptom could only point to one conclusion, and I soon made out how they had come to be frostbitten. At the time when the step-cutting began I had been wearing a pair of lined leather gloves, motor-drivers’ gloves well suited to the occasion, and my hands had been so warm that I thought it safe to change the glove on my right hand for a woollen one with which it was easier to grasp the axe. But wool is not a good protection against wind, and in grasping the axe I must have partially stopped the circulation in these finger-tips. The injury, though not serious, was inconvenient. And Morshead had felt the cold far more than I. It is still uncertain whether he had yet been frostbitten in toes and fingers, but though he made no complaint about them until much later I have little doubt they were already touched, if not severely frozen. At all events, he had been badly chilled on the way up; he was obliged to lie down when we reached our camp and was evidently unwell.
When all is said about our troubles and difficulties, the night, in spite of everything, was endurable. For distraction to pass the sleepless intervals engaging thoughts were not far to seek; we had still our plans for to-morrow; the climax was to come; and, might we not get so high by such a time? Then, might not the remaining hours be almost, even quite enough? Besides, we had accomplished something, and though the moments following achievement are occupied more often in looking forward than in looking back, we perhaps deliberately encouraged in ourselves a certain complacency on the present occasion; we were able to feel some little satisfaction in the mere existence of this camp, the two small tents perched there on the vast mountain-side of snow-bound rocks and actually higher, at 25,000 feet, than any climbing party had been before. “Hang it all!” we cooed, “it’s not so bad.”
The worst of it in dimly conscious moments was still the weather. The wind had dropped in the evening, as it often does, and nothing was to be deduced from that; but the hovering clouds had not cleared off and the night was too warm. I’m not meaning that we complained of the warmth; but for fine weather we must have a cold night, and it was no colder here than we had often known it at Camp III.[[6]] Occasionally stars were visible during the night; but they shone with a feeble, watery light, and in the early morning we were listening to the musical patter of fine, granular snow on the roofs of our tents. A thick mist had come up all about us, and the stones outside were white with a growing pall of fresh snow. We were greatly surprised under these conditions when, at about 6.30 a.m., a perceptible break appeared in the clouds to the East of us, the “weather quarter,” and this good sign developed so hopefully that we were soon encouraged to expect a fair day. It was even more surprising perhaps that some one among us very quickly discovered his conscience: “I suppose,” he said with a stifled yawn, in a tone that reminded one of Mr. Saltena rolling over in his costly bed, “it’s about time we were getting up.” No one dissented—how could one dissent? “I suppose we ought to be getting up,” we grunted in turn, and slowly we began to draw ourselves out from the tight warmth of those friendly bags.
[6]. The thermometer confirmed our senses and showed a minimum reading for the night of 7° F.
I do not propose to emphasise the various agonies of an early-morning start or to catalogue all that may be found for fumbling fingers to do; but one incident is worth recording. A second rucksack escaped us, slipping from the ledge where it was perched, and went bounding down the mountain. Its value, even Norton will agree, was greater than that of the first; it contained our provisions; our breakfast was inside it. From the moment of its elusion I gave it up for lost. What could stop its fatal career? What did stop it unless it were a miracle? Somehow or another it was hung up on a ledge 100 feet below. Morshead volunteered to go and get it. By slow degrees he dragged up the heavy load, and our precious stores were recovered intact.