Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/174

136 allowance. Even apart from the temperature, there was no possibility of sleep, so wild was the night. Fierce gusts shook the hut as a terrier shakes a rat, the rafters creaked and groaned and the wire cables binding it to the rocks shivered taut with the strain. To make oneself heard it was necessary to shout or one's voice was drowned in the gale. The snow gathering on the roof melted, and little trickles found their way in here and there and dripped steadily upon the luckless individual who occupied the spot beneath. For two days the gale blew unabated and the snow piled itself around us. We slept, ate, talked, and played cards, and the cold hours wore away quite pleasantly, and at last, at about 4 p.m. on Christmas Day, the storm was over. We all rushed out and started hilariously snow-balling one another, and generally spending a thoroughly picture-postcard time of it.

We had been so long delayed by the storm that it was no longer possible for me to go over to the West Coast and return in time to meet my friend, Muriel Cadogan, on her arrival at the Hermitage. I therefore decided to drop out of the West Coast party. Mr. Chambers also gave up the expedition and decided to return to the Hermitage with me and, if we could get a guide, try our luck upon the Footstool. At 1.30 a.m. on the 26th we said good-bye to Miss Murray Aynsley and the two Grahams. Not very long afterwards Mr. Chambers and I set out unguided for the Ball hut. The morning was intensely cold and the new snow still frozen, so we made a record journey of it, in spite of getting rather mixed when threading our way through the crevasses of the icefall. We reached the Ball hut in two and three-quarter hours, and after a hastily prepared meal pushed on to the Hermitage, which we reached at 1 p.m.

Next day we had a wire from the coast telling of the safe arrival of our party. No guides were available at the Hermitage, so the Footstool plan had to be given up. That