Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/91

 that he should come down, and after one more hopeless look he complied, and was soon standing beside me on the brink of the schrund. Neither of us had much to say; it was one of the bitterest moments I ever experienced, and mere words were useless. We must have stood there half an hour, knowing it was hopeless, yet hating to leave, thinking of all the plans we had made and the obstacles we had overcome to be landed in such a cul-de-sac. One thing did console me a trifle, and that was the knowledge that no man or woman would climb Mount Cook by this route for another year; and by that time I would be in the field again. For the time being I was beaten, but only till it was possible to try again. At last with a sigh we agreed it was no use standing there and freezing any longer, so reluctantly I led down, following our footsteps back to the bivouac, at which we arrived at 8.30 a.m. to find Tom still peacefully sleeping. We indulged in a second breakfast, about the most cheerless meal I ever partook of, and packing up, started on our long homeward tramp. The day turned grey and cold, and another consolation was offered to us in the fact that even if we had succeeded, we would have been half frozen and had no view—that wonderful view which I had pictured in my imagination so often. Well, I could wait another year, and so I began building plans again as we toiled homeward.

We safely straddled over our crevasse, and by 3 p.m. we were back at our first bivouac. By this time the only thing I cared about was sleep, not having had any for two nights. Graham was not in much better case, so we threw ourselves down in the long grass, and left Tom, who had had his full share, to do all the work. I most deeply resented being awakened to eat, food being as nothing compared to sleep; at 4 p.m. it took some moral persuasion to rouse me for our seven-mile tramp to the Hermitage. Once started, the walking soon became merely mechanical, and we plodded steadily along and reached