However, even Somervell’s passion for using coloured chalks did not encourage him to stay long inactive in a place designed to be a funnel for the West wind of Tibet at an elevation of about 23,000 feet. We sped again over snow-covered monticules thrust up from the chaos of riven ice, and at last looked down from one more prominent little summit to the very nape of the Chang La. We saw our conjectured shelf in real existence and a fair way before us. In a moment all our doubts were eased. We knew that the foot of the North Ridge, by which alone we could approach the summit of Mount Everest, was not beyond our reach. Dasno meanwhile was stretched in the snow on the sheltered shelf, which clearly must serve us sooner or later for Camp IV. As we looked down upon him from the battlements, we noticed that their shadow already covered the greater part of the shelf. It was four o’clock. We must delay no longer. The tent which Dasno had carried up was left to be the symbol of our future intentions, and we hastened down. Since 7 a.m. Somervell and I had been spending our strength with only one considerable halt, and latterly at a rapid rate. For some hours now we had felt the dull height-headache which results from exertion with too little oxygen, a symptom, I am told, not unlike the effect of poisoning by carbon monoxide. The unpleasing symptom became so increasingly disagreeable as we came down that I was very glad to reach our tent again. As it was only fair that Somervell should share all my sufferings, it now seemed inconsiderate of him to explain that he had a good appetite. For my part, I took a little soup and could face no food; defeated for the first and last time in either expedition before the sight of supper. I humbly swallowed a dose of aspirin, lay my head on the pillow and went to sleep. V For three days now we made no expedition of any consequence. The question arises, then, what did we? I have been searching the meagre entries in my journal for an answer, with no satisfactory result. The doctrine that men should be held accountable for their days, or even their hours, is one to which the very young often subscribe as a matter of course, seeing in front of them such a long way to go and so little time: the futility of exact accounts in this sort is apparent among mountains; the span of human life appears so short as hardly to be capable of the usual subdivisions, and a much longer period than a day may be neglected as easily as a halfpenny in current expenditure; and while some hours and days are spent in doing, others pass in simply being or being evolved, a process in the mind not to be measured in terms of time. Nevertheless, it is often interesting to draft a balance-sheet covering a period of twenty-four hours or seven days if only to see how much must truthfully be set down as “unaccounted.”