When the dawn is full and grey,
Sleep is still the better way:
Beasts are up betimes, but then
They are beasts, and we are men.”
But, as a matter of fact, the weather was glorious, and we had reluctantly to tear ourselves away from the flesh-pots of the hut. So once more we shouldered our loads, marched up the glacier to the De la Bêche Bivouac, and dined there at 3 p.m. In order to save our fresh provisions, we ate some bread that was a month old and had been lying under the rock for three weeks. It was blue mouldy in the cracks, but judicious paring made it palatable, and we even enjoyed it. The butter was also old. It had been buried in an ice-slope near the Bivouac some weeks before, and now we found it had mysteriously disappeared. After some considerable search, it was discovered in a cranny between the rocks, into which it had fallen owing to the recedence of the ice slope by melting. It was fairly good. Dinner over, we left for the Malte Brun Bivouac, higher up, on the other side of the glacier. Here, in a little flat hollow between the lateral moraine and the mountain, we discovered a scanty supply of snow grass that had been used for bedding by Dr. Kronecker, a German climber, four years before. Apparently the worthy Doctor had left camp in a hurry, for, on shaking out the grass, we found in it an Austrian climbing lantern of the folding pattern, and, near at hand, on the rocks, a penknife, much rusted, also the remains of a leather case for a field-glass.
When crossing the upper portion of the glacier from the De la Bêche Bivouac we came to the conclusion that our swags were too heavy for difficult climbing, so we now set to work to reduce them to the smallest possible compass. We jettisoned some spare clothing and provisions, and it was finally decided, after much deep thought, that my camera should be left behind—a decision I have never since ceased to regret, because, on this expedition, we traversed unexplored country by a route that in all these years no one has since attempted. Moreover, when, dishevelled and aweary, I returned, some weeks later, by a more southern pass to the Hermitage, it cost me a walk of forty-eight miles to retrieve the camera! We had a beautifully fine night for our bivouac, and, having supped, and there being nothing else to do, we turned into our sleeping bags while it was yet day. The view was glorious, and we watched the great steadfast peaks slowly changing colour in “the held breath of the day’s decline.” Across the glacier, but a mile and a half away, rose the main range of the Southern Alps in all its glory of broken glacier, black precipice, and snowy dome. Lying in bed there we looked far down the Tasman to where Aorangi’s great ice-capped ridge pierced the primrose of the western sky, and watched, through God’s great window, the coming of the stars—for in such bivouacs as these it is that you get the most glorious revelations of the night. True, our pillow of rock was somewhat hard, and the Milky Way was rather a cool counterpane. But what cared we? The Goddess of Indolence does not come so far up the glacier. We were Spartans again.
On Saturday, an hour after midnight, we crept out of our sleeping bags to prepare breakfast, and at 2 a.m. we shouldered our packs and set our faces towards the unknown. In the dim light we had to exercise a little care in descending the loose rocks of the moraine and in getting over the broken ice at the edge of the glacier. Once we had left the moraine and the crevasses behind, the going was easy; but we went at a very leisurely pace, wishing to keep our strength in reserve, for we knew not what difficulties were in front of us. The white mountains at the head of the glacier looked ethereally beautiful in the clear moonlight, which cast strong cold shadows on the white ice as we walked along. On our left, a fine avalanche fell from the lower slopes of Elie de Beaumont, and came thundering down into the head of the valley. In the east a pale flush heralded the dawn.
Crevasse on Tasman Glacier.