I shall perhaps appear as affirming or repeating what is merely commonplace if I venture to make some observations about the weather, but I must here insist upon its importance to mountaineers; and though I cannot remember that the subject was much discussed among us at Camp III, it remained but a little way below the surface of consciousness. In settled weather among mountains one has not a great deal to observe. The changing colours at sunrise and sunset follow an expected sequence, the white flocks of fleecy clouds form and drift upwards, or the midday haze gathers about the peaks, leaving the climber unperturbed. He has sniffed the keen air before dawn when he came out under the bright stars, and his optimism is assured for the day. On Mount Everest it had been supposed that the season preceding the monsoon would be mainly fair; but we knew that the warm moist wind should be approaching up the Arun Valley, pushing up towards us during the month of May, and we must expect to feel something of its influence. Moreover, we did not know very well how to read the signs in this country. We anxiously watched and studied them; each of us, I suppose, while he might be engaged upon one thing or another, or talking of matters infinitely and delightfully remote from Mount Everest, like a pilot had his weather-eye open. And what he saw would not all be encouraging. The drift of the upper clouds, it is true, was fairly consistent; the white wisps of smoke, as it seemed, were driven in our direction over the North Col, and occasionally the clear edge of the North Ridge would be dulled with powdery snow puffed out on the Eastern side. But looking across the snowfield from near our camp to where the head of Makalu showed over the Rapiu La, we saw strange things happening. On May 16, our day of rest, a number of us paid a visit to this pass, and as we stood above the head of the Kama Valley, the clouds boiling up from that vast and terrible cauldron were not gleaming white, but sadly grey. A glimpse down the valley showed under them the sombre blue light that forebodes mischief, and Makalu, seen through a rift, looked cold and grim. The evidence of trouble in store for us was not confined to the Kama Valley, for some clouds away to the North also excited our suspicion, and yet, as we looked up the edges of the North-east arête to its curving sickle and the great towers of the North-east shoulder, here was the dividing-line between the clear air and fair weather to the right, and the white mists to the left streaming up above the ridge and all the evil omens. The bitterest even of Tibetan winds poured violently over the pass at our backs. We wondered as we turned to meet it how long a respite was to be allowed us.