Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/83

Rh polite surprise that any one should try to interfere with what were so obviously my private affairs. With hopes dashed at all points the attacking party desisted, contenting, themselves with Cassandra-like prophecies as to our probable end. On Friday, January 21st, the sun came out once more after four days of pouring rain; at 4.30 p.m. Tom, the porter, Graham, and I left the Hermitage. The men were both heavily laden, as we had to take an equipment sufficient for four days. This included two tents, sleeping-bags, extra clothes, and provisions. In spite of swags that must have weighed 50 lb. each, the men's spirits were in nowise damped, and mine were at bubbling-point, since we were really off at last, in spite of all obstacles. After leaving the Hermitage we crossed the Hooker River, and followed along its right-hand bank on a track cut in the cliff. Fifty feet below us the torrent roared along in its narrow bed, flashing foam-white over the boulders that impede its course. The evening was perfect, and leaving the river we sauntered the seven miles to our first bivouac. The track winds through a grassy meadow, studded here and there with great patches of white mountain lilies and bushes of veronica. To the left Mount Sefton's white wall towered above us, and straight ahead, blocking the whole valley and looking as if you had but to put out a hand and touch it, stood the centre of all our hopes, Mount Cook. We bivouacked under its shadow in a grassy valley. The tents were soon pitched, and our meal prepared over a cheery fire by which we sat and talked till 11 p.m. It was a perfect moonlight night, its stillness only disturbed now and then by the boom of an avalanche off Mount Sefton and the splash of a distant waterfall; it seemed wasteful to bury one's self in a tent on such a night, but at last I crept into mine, and putting my boots under my rucksac for a pillow, wriggled into my sleeping-bag and endeavoured quite fruitlessly to go to sleep. About 2 a.m. I dozed