We were now within about two thousand five hundred feet of the summit and had two weeks' full supply of food and fuel, which, at a pinch, could be stretched to three weeks. Certain things were short: the chocolate and figs and raisins and salt were low; of the zwieback there remained but two and one-half packages, reserved against lunch when we attacked the summit. But the meatballs, the erbswurst, the caribou jelly, the rice, and the tea--our staples--were abundant for two weeks, with four gallons of coal-oil and a gallon of alcohol. The end of our painful transportation hither was accomplished; we were within one day's climb of the summit with supplies to besiege. If the weather should prove persistently bad we could wait; we could advance our parallels; could put another camp on the ridge itself at nineteen thousand feet, and yet another half-way up the dome. If we had to fight our way step by step and could advance but a couple of hundred feet a day, we were still confident that, barring unforeseeable misfortunes, we could reach the top. But we wanted a clear day on top, that the observations we designed to make could be made; it would be a poor success that did but set our feet on the highest point. And we felt sure that, prepared as we were to wait, the clear day would come. [Illustration: The North Peak, 20,000 feet high. Our last camp in the Grand Basin, at 18,000 feet: the highest camp ever made in North America.] As so often happens when everything unpropitious is guarded against, nothing unpropitious occurs. It would have been a wonderful chance, indeed, if, supplied only for one day, a fine, clear day had come. But supplied against bad weather for two or three weeks, it was no wonder at all that the very first day should have presented itself bright and clear. We had exhausted our bad fortune below; here, at the juncture above all others at which we should have chosen to enjoy it, we were to encounter our good fortune. [Sidenote: Breathlessness] But here, where all signs seemed to promise success to the expedition, the author began to have fears of personal failure. The story of Mr. Fitzgerald's expedition to Aconcagua came to his mind, and he recalled that, although every other member of the party reached the summit, that gentleman himself was unable to do so. In the last stage the difficulty of breathing had increased with fits of smothering, and the medicine chest held no remedy for blind staggers. CHAPTER V THE ULTIMATE HEIGHT