When all is said about our troubles and difficulties, the night, in spite of everything, was endurable. For distraction to pass the sleepless intervals engaging thoughts were not far to seek; we had still our plans for to-morrow; the climax was to come; and, might we not get so high by such a time? Then, might not the remaining hours be almost, even quite enough? Besides, we had accomplished something, and though the moments following achievement are occupied more often in looking forward than in looking back, we perhaps deliberately encouraged in ourselves a certain complacency on the present occasion; we were able to feel some little satisfaction in the mere existence of this camp, the two small tents perched there on the vast mountain-side of snow-bound rocks and actually higher, at 25,000 feet, than any climbing party had been before. “Hang it all!” we cooed, “it’s not so bad.” The worst of it in dimly conscious moments was still the weather. The wind had dropped in the evening, as it often does, and nothing was to be deduced from that; but the hovering clouds had not cleared off and the night was too warm. I’m not meaning that we complained of the warmth; but for fine weather we must have a cold night, and it was no colder here than we had often known it at Camp III.[6] Occasionally stars were visible during the night; but they shone with a feeble, watery light, and in the early morning we were listening to the musical patter of fine, granular snow on the roofs of our tents. A thick mist had come up all about us, and the stones outside were white with a growing pall of fresh snow. We were greatly surprised under these conditions when, at about 6.30 a.m., a perceptible break appeared in the clouds to the East of us, the “weather quarter,” and this good sign developed so hopefully that we were soon encouraged to expect a fair day. It was even more surprising perhaps that some one among us very quickly discovered his conscience: “I suppose,” he said with a stifled yawn, in a tone that reminded one of Mr. Saltena rolling over in his costly bed, “it’s about time we were getting up.” No one dissented—how could one dissent? “I suppose we ought to be getting up,” we grunted in turn, and slowly we began to draw ourselves out from the tight warmth of those friendly bags. Footnote 6: The thermometer confirmed our senses and showed a minimum reading for the night of 7° F.