But the most honoured climber there was Geoffrey Young. Geoffrey had been climbing for a number of years and was president of the Climbers’ Club. I was told that his four closest friends had all at different times been killed climbing; this was a comment on the extraordinary care with which he always climbed. It was not merely shown in his preparations for a climb—the careful examination, foot by foot, of the alpine rope, the attention to his boot-nails and the balanced loading of his knapsack—but also in his cautiousness in the climbing itself. Before making any move he thought it out foot by foot, as though it were a problem in chess. If the next handhold happened to be just a little out of his reach or the next foothold seemed at all unsteady he would stop and think of some way round the difficulty. George used sometimes to get impatient, but Geoffrey refused to be hurried. He was short, which put him at a disadvantage in the matter of reach. He was not as double-jointed and prehensile as Porter or as magnificent as George, but he was the perfect climber. And still remains so. This in spite of having lost a leg while serving with a Red Cross unit on the Italian front. He climbs with an artificial leg. He has recently published the only satisfactory text-book on rock-climbing. I was very proud to be on a rope with Geoffrey Young. He said once: ‘Robert, you have the finest natural balance that I have ever seen in a climber.’ This compliment pleased me far more than if the Poet Laureate had told me that I had the finest sense of rhythm that he had ever met in a young poet. It is quite true that I have a good balance; once, in Switzerland, it saved me from a broken leg or legs. My mother took us there in the Christmas holidays of 1913–14, ostensibly for winter sports, but really because she thought that she owed it to my sisters to give them a chance to meet nice young men of means. About the third day that I put on skis I went up from Champéry, where we were staying and the snow was too soft, to Morgins, a thousand feet higher, where it was like sugar. Here I found an ice-run for skeleton-toboggans. Without considering that skis have no purchase on ice at all, I launched myself down it. After a few yards my speed increased alarmingly and I suddenly realized what I was in for. There were several sharp turns in the run protected by high banks, and I had to trust entirely to body-balance in swerving round them. I reached the terminus still upright and had my eyes damned by a frightened sports-club official for having endangered my life on his territory.