It seemed certain that the next two days must provide the climax or anticlimax of our whole reconnaissance. The mystery must surely now be penetrated and the most important discovery of all be made. A competition with my companion for the honour of being first was, I hope, as far from my thoughts as ever it had been. From the start Bullock and I had shared the whole campaign and worked and made our plans together, and neither for a moment had envied the other the monopoly of a particular adventure. Nevertheless, after all that had passed, the experience of being left out at the finish would not be agreeable to me; I confess that not to be in at the death after leading the hunt so long was a bitter expectation. But the hunt must not be stopped, and on the morning of August 13, from the ungrateful comfort of my sleeping-bag, I waved farewell to Bullock. How many days would he be absent before he came to tell his story, and what sort of story would it be? Would he know for certain that the way was found? or how much longer would our doubts continue? It was impossible to stay in bed with such thoughts, and by the middle of the morning I was sitting in the sun to write home my dismal tale. A hint from one of the coolies interrupted my meditations; I looked round and now saw, to my great surprise and unfeigned delight, the approaching figure of Major Morshead. I had long been hoping that he might be free to join us; and he arrived at the due moment to cheer my present solitude, to strengthen the party, and to help us when help was greatly needed. Moreover, he brought from Wollaston for my use a medical dope; stimulated by the unusual act of drug-taking, or possibly by the drug itself, I began to entertain a hope for the morrow, a feeling incommunicably faint but distinguishably a hope. Meanwhile Bullock, though he had not started early, had got off soon enough in the morning to pitch his tents if all went well some hours before dark, and in all probability at least so far up as to be within view of the glacier snout. As the night was closing in a coolie was observed running down the last steep sandy slope to our camp. He brought a chit from Bullock: "I can see up the glacier ahead of me and it ends in another high pass. I shall get to the pass to-morrow morning if I can, and ought to see our glacier over it. But it looks, after all, as though the most unlikely solution is the right one and the glacier goes out into the Rongbuk Valley." Into the Rongbuk Valley! We had discussed the possibility. The glacier coming in there from the East remained unexplored. But even if we left out of account all that was suggested by the East arete of Changtse and other features of this country, there remained the unanswerable difficulty about the stream, the little stream which we had but just failed to cross in the afternoon of our first expedition. How could so little water drain so large an area of ice as must exist on this supposition?