After erecting a small cairn, depositing a record of our ascent, and giving three cheers for nobody quite knew what, we roped up and began the descent.
It is astonishing how one’s spirits revive when a fresh set of muscles is brought into action, aided by the force of gravitation, and though we had been defeated in our attempt to reach the Tasman, what did that matter? Though we were half-dead with starvation—‘Starvation Saddle’ is now the name of our col—and though a real weariness of the flesh had taken hold of us, what matter? We had explored (I might almost say discovered) the great glacier we had come out to see, and would be able to settle all sorts of topographical errors in the maps, and could speak with authority about many square miles of Alpine country hitherto entirely unknown.
Our spirits rose as we descended, despite our hungry and tired state, and we once more wound our way down among the crevasses, and reaching the glacier again made for the lowest point we could before night closed in. But we had an hour’s cruel moraine work in the dark ere we found a sleeping-place on a bed of lilies, where we boiled our last drop of Liebig and divided our remaining crust of bread.
It rained a little during the night, but we did not care for that with our oilskin bags, and sleep visited our weary eyelids as it had never done before.
Hamilton’s condition had improved, but his feet were sore and he was very weak when at 4.30 a.m. we once more set off for our home on the glaciers—the Ball Glacier camp. The prospect of boiled rice and fresh chops lured us on as we made our way down the valley, and putting forth our last remaining energy we made the ever-welcome refuge in eight hours, Harper, who had most left in him, going on ahead and preparing a substantial feed for the stragglers behind.
Oh, that tin plate of rice, and those chops, and that tea!
How came an exhibition of pluck rarely seen. After two hours’ rest Hamilton said he must reach the Hermitage that night; despite our dissuasions he determined to go on, and Annan generously volunteered to accompany him. These two men actually reached the Hermitage that evening at 8.30. It was the pluckiest day’s work I have ever seen done in the mountains.
Harper and I came down next day in a snow storm, with fifty-pound swags.
Many people seem to think that a visit to the Alpine regions necessarily entails contact with very cold weather, even in the summer time. This is quite an erroneous idea, for on this occasion the thermometer readings at the lower camp varied from 42° Fahr. in the morning to 72° in the evening, and I should think that even during the coldest night the instrument did not register much lower than the first-named figure. We frequently went about in shirt and knickers only, and the usual complaint is of the heat, not of the cold. Some men suffer a good deal of discomfort from sunburn. I myself am a victim in this respect. It is the upper and freshly fallen snow which is so ruinous to the epidermis, the reflection from the new and unmelted crystals being so great as to cause the skin to assume a dark chocolate colour even during one-day’s work amongst it.
Sometimes blisters form, after which the skin puckers up and eventually peels off in patches. The noses of persons possessed of aquiline features are usually a study in themselves after a day or two’s exposure on new snow.