Two hundred yards, or little more in a direct line, now separated us from our tents, with the promise of safety, repose, and warmth in our soft eiderdown bags. Looking back, I never can make out how we came to spend so long in reaching them. We had but to go along the broken saddle of snow and ice where our tracks lay, and then drop down to our camp on the shelf. But the tracks were concealed, and not to be found; crevasses lay under the snow waiting for us. With nothing to guide us, we must proceed cautiously, and once among the confusing shapes of white walls and terraces and monticules and corridors, it was the easiest thing in the world to lose our way. Somervell, who had covered the ground once each way more often than any of us, held the helm, so to speak, against a sea of conflicting opinions. Even he, now our leader, was not always right, and we had more than once to come back along our tracks and take a cast in another direction. To avoid the possible trouble or disaster of having two men at once in a crevasse, we were obliged to keep our intervals on the ropes, so that Morshead had now to take care of himself. Perhaps the lower altitude had already begun to tell, for he was stronger now, and came along much better than was to be expected. At length we reached a recognisable landmark, a cliff of ice about 15 feet high, where we had jumped down over a crevasse on our first visit here in order to avoid a disagreeable long step over another crevasse on an alternative route. I was very glad we had come this way rather than the other, for though, looking down at the dimly lit space of snow which was to receive us, I boggled a little at the idea of this leap, the landing-place was sure to be soft, and it would be easy not to miss it. [Illustration: THE FIRST CLIMBING PARTY. ] I think each of us was just a little relieved when he found himself safely down, and I dimly remember congratulating, not Morshead, but Longstaff. I had already transposed the names several times, and he now protested; but it made no difference, as I could remember no other. “Longstaff” became an _idée fixe_, and though the entity of Morshead remained unconfused—I did not, for instance, give him Longstaff’s beard—he was fixedly Longstaff until the following morning.