Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/138

 limbs, or a sharp stone digging into my anatomy, but soon dropped off to sleep again.

Next morning no one attempted to move until about 7 a.m. In the enthusiasm of our successful return the evening before, some one had suggested that we might climb Mount Dampier, the then highest virgin peak in New Zealand, which lay close at hand. Now, though the enthusiasm was still there, the required energy was somewhat lacking. Instead, after breakfast we lay on the rocks, basking in the sun and discussing our previous day's experiences with that intense joy in the retrospective details which means so much to the enthusiastic sportsman, and especially the mountaineer, who at the moment of accomplishment has no time to spare for anything but the work at hand. Stretched at our ease in the peaceful sheltered warmth, we could enjoy the contrasts to the full. Foot by foot and hour by hour we lingered lovingly over the details of our latest achievement. We experienced once again the eerie start in the flickering candlelight, and thrilled to the crunch of the frozen snow beneath our nailed boots or the tuneful ring of axes on some icy slope. Our numbed fingers clung once more to the death-cold rocks, as we shiveringly awaited the word of our leader seeking the way above us, we watching meanwhile the glory of the sunrise which wakens the cold-blue ice world, till summit after summit is flashed into glowing life, and our own numbed bodies are warmed once more to that dauntless energy which makes life and motion a crowning joy. We know again the pride of the steady head, the long reach, and the sure foot, muscle and brain pitting themselves against the mightiest forces of nature as when life flows wild and free in the beginning of the world. All the primitive emotions are ours—hunger and thirst, heat and cold, triumph and fear—as yard by yard we win our way to stand as conquerors and survey our realm. And then the