Page:Mannering - With axe and rope in the New Zealand Alps.djvu/127

Rh numerous crevasses. In addition to this, one man was lying hors de combat on the snow suffering from exhaustion and vomiting. Evidently the only course we could pursue was to retrace our upward route, and that as quickly as possible, for there were but three hours of daylight left to reach a bivouac in the rocks lower down.

After erecting a small cairn, depositing a record of our ascent, and giving three cheers for nobody quite knew what, we roped up and began the descent.

It is astonishing how one's spirits revive when a fresh set of muscles is brought into action, aided by the force of gravitation, and though we had been defeated in our attempt to reach the Tasman, what did that matter? Though we were half-dead with starvation—'Starvation Saddle' is now the name of our col—and though a real weariness of the flesh had taken hold of us, what matter? We had explored (I might almost say discovered) the great glacier we had come out to see, and would be able to settle all sorts of topographical errors in the maps, and could speak with authority about many square miles of Alpine country hitherto entirely unknown.

Our spirits rose as we descended, despite our hungry and tired state, and we once more wound our way down among the crevasses, and reaching the glacier again made for the lowest point we could before night closed in. But we had an hour's cruel moraine work in the dark ere we found a sleeping-place on a bed of lilies, where we boiled our last drop of Liebig and divided our remaining crust of bread.

It rained a little during the night, but we did not