We had risen about 1,200 feet when we stopped to put on the spare warm clothes which we carried against such a contingency as this. For my part, I added a light shetland “woolly” and a thin silk shirt to what I was wearing before under my closely woven cotton coat. As this outer garment, with knickers to match, was practically windproof, and a silk shirt too is a further protection against wind, with these two extra layers I feared no cold we were likely to meet. Morshead, if I remember right, troubled himself no more at this time than to wrap a woollen scarf round his neck, and he and I were ready and impatient to get off before the rest. Norton was sitting a little way below with his rucksack poised on his lap. In gathering up our rope so as to have it free when we should move on I must have communicated to the other rope some small jerk—sufficient, at all events, to upset the balance of Norton’s rucksack. He was unprepared, made a desperate grab, and missed it. Slowly the round, soft thing gathered momentum from its rotation, the first little leaps down from one ledge to another grew to excited and magnificent bounds, and the precious burden vanished from sight. For a little interval, while we still imagined its fearful progress until it should rest for who knows how long on the snow at the head of the Rongbuk Glacier, no one spoke. “My rucksack gone down the kudh!” Norton exclaimed with simple regret. I made a mental note that my warm pyjama-legs which he had borrowed were inside it, so if I were to blame I had a share in the loss. A number of offers in woollen garments for the night were soon made to Norton; after which we began to explain what each had brought for comfort’s sake, and I wondered whether my companions’ system of selection resembled mine;—as I never can resolve in cold blood to leave anything behind, when each article presents itself as just the one I may particularly want, I pack them all into a rucksack and then pull out this and that more or less at random until the load is not greater than I can conveniently carry; even so I almost invariably find that I have more clothing in reserve than I actually use.