Whether the decision we came to at this crisis of our fortunes were right or wrong, I cannot tell, and I hardly want to know. I have no wish to excuse our judgment. Who can tell what might have happened had we decided otherwise? And who can judge? Then why should I be at the pains to analyse the thoughts which influenced our decision? It is perhaps a futile inquiry. Nevertheless it is such decisions that determine the fate of a mountaineering enterprise, and the operative motives or contending points of view may have an interest of their own. Among us there was deliberation often enough, but never contention. There never was a dissentient voice to anything we resolved to do, partly, I suppose, because we had little choice in the matter, more because we were that sort of party. We had a single aim in common and regarded it from common ground. We had no leader within the full meaning of the word, no one in authority over the rest to command as captain. We all knew equally what was required to be done from first to last, and when the occasion arose for doing it one of us did it. Some one, if only to avoid delay in action, had to arrange the order in which the party or parties should proceed. I took this responsibility without waiting to be asked; the rest accepted my initiative, I suppose, because I used to talk so much about what had been done on the previous Expedition. In practice it amounted only to this, that I would say to my companions, “A, will you go first? B, will you go second?” and we roped up in the order indicated without palaver. Apart from this I never attempted to inflict my own view on men who were at least as capable as I of judging what was best. Our proceedings in any crisis of our fortunes were informally democratic. They were so on the occasion from which I have so grievously digressed.