The First Climbing Party.
I think each of us was just a little relieved when he found himself safely down, and I dimly remember congratulating, not Morshead, but Longstaff. I had already transposed the names several times, and he now protested; but it made no difference, as I could remember no other. “Longstaff” became an idée fixe, and though the entity of Morshead remained unconfused—I did not, for instance, give him Longstaff’s beard—he was fixedly Longstaff until the following morning.
The agreeable change of finding ourselves together in that curious coign was hardly disturbed by Somervell’s remark, “We’re very near the end of our candle.” We felt we were all very near the end of our journey, for we had dimly made out from the higher level we had just quitted the neat rank of our tents still standing on the shelf below and ready to welcome us. We had only to find the rope which had been fixed on the steep slope below us and we should be at the end of our troubles. But the rope was deeply buried, and we searched in vain, dragging the snow with our picks along the edge of the fall. We were still searching when the last of our candle burnt out. In the end we must do without the rope, and began the abrupt descent tentatively, dubiously, uncertain that we had hit off just the right place. The situation was decidedly disagreeable. Suddenly someone among us hitched up the rope from under the snow. It may be imagined we were not slow to grasp it. The blessed security of feeling the frozen but helpful thing firmly in our hands! We positively made some sort of a noise; unrecognisable, perhaps, it would have been to sober daylight beings who know how to produce the proper effect, but if a dim bat of the night were asked what this noise resembled, he might have indicated that distantly, but without mistake it was like a cheer. A few minutes more and then—then, at 11.30 p.m., and there on the good flat snow as we fumbled at the tent-doors, then and there at last we began to say, “Thank God.”
Had we known what was yet in store for us, or rather what was not in store, we might have waited a little longer for so emphatic an exclamation. We were in need of food, and no solid food could be eaten until something had been done towards satisfying our thirst. It was not that one felt, at least I did not feel, a desire to drink; but the long effort of the lungs during the day in a rarefied atmosphere where evaporation is so rapid had deprived the body of moisture to such an extent that it was impossible to swallow, for instance, a ration biscuit. We must first melt snow and have water. But where were the cooking-pots? We searched the tents without finding a trace of them. Presumably the porters whom we had expected to find here had taken them down to Camp III in error. As we sat slowly unlacing our boots within the tents, it was impossible to believe in this last misfortune. We waited for a brainwave; but no way could be devised of melting the snow without a vessel. Still supperless, we wriggled into our sleeping-bags. And then something happened in Norton’s head. In his visions of all that was succulent and juicy and fit to be swallowed with ease and pleasure there had suddenly appeared an ice-cream. It was this that he now proposed to us; we had the means at hand to make ice-creams, he said. A tin of strawberry jam was opened; frozen Ideal Milk was hacked out of another; these two ingredients were mixed with snow, and it only remained to eat the compound. To my companions this seemed an easy matter; their appetite for strawberry cream ice was hardly nice to watch. I too managed to swallow down a little before the deadly sickliness of the stuff disgusted me. My gratitude to Norton was afterwards cooled by disagreeable sensations. In the last drowsy moments before complete forgetfulness I was convulsed by shudderings which I was powerless to control; the muscles of my back seemed to be contracted with cramp; and, short of breath, I was repeatedly obliged to raise myself on my elbows and start again that solemn exercise of deep-breathing as though the habit had become indispensable.
The last stage of our descent to Camp III had still to be accomplished on the following morning of May 22. I imagine that a fresh man with old tracks to help him might cover the distance from Camp IV in about an hour and a quarter. But no sign was left of our old tracks, and the snow was deeper here than higher up. Only in the harder substance below the fresh surface could new steps be cut wherever the slope was steep; and as we began to understand that the way would be long and toilsome, another thought occurred to us—our sleeping-bags at Camp IV would now be required at Camp III, and porters must be sent to fetch them. Our tracks, therefore, must be made safe for them. Half our labour was in hewing so fine a staircase that the porters would be able to go up and down unescorted without danger. The wearisome descent, which began at 6 a.m., continued far into the morning; the sun pierced the vapoury mists and the heat was immoderate now as the cold had been higher up. The fatigued party regarded the conventions until the first man reached the snow at the foot of the final ice-slope. There, so far as I could understand, the van became possessed of the idea that it would be more companionable for all to finish together. I found myself deliberately pulled from my steps and slid about 80 feet down the ice until the pick of my axe pulled me up at the foot of the slope. I could have borne the ignominy of my involuntary glissade had I not found Finch at the foot of the slope taking advantage of my situation with a kodak.
Frostbitten climber being helped down to Camp II.
The presence of Finch was easily explained. Reinforcements had arrived at Camp III in our absence, and the transport had worked with such wonderful speed that the oxygen cylinders were already in action. Finch, whom we had last heard of in bed with dysentery at the Base Camp, had shown such energy that he was now testing the oxygen apparatus with Wakefield and Geoffrey Bruce. They were bound for the North Col with a party of porters, so the return of our sleeping-bags was easily arranged. The lesser injustices of fate are hard to forgive, and we regretted labour that might have been left to others. However, Wakefield now took us in charge, and at noon we were at Camp III once more. Strutt and Morris had come out to meet us. Noel had stayed in camp, and, like a tormentor waiting for his disarmed victim, there we found the “movie” camera and him winding the handle.
However, our welcome in camp is a pleasing memory. The supply of tea was inexhaustible. Somervell confesses to having drunk seventeen mugfuls; he can hardly have been so moderate. Morshead probably needed to drink more than any of us; he ascribed his exhaustion on the mountain to want of liquid, and medical opinion was inclined to agree with the suggestion. However that may be, the night’s rest at a lower elevation had largely restored his strength, and Morshead arrived at Camp III no more fatigued to all appearances than the rest of us. But he bore the marks of his painful ordeal. His condition had made him a prey to the cold, and we only began to realise how badly he had been frostbitten as we sat in camp while Wakefield bound up the black swollen fingers.