In the present instance my first inclination is to write off in this bold fashion a full half of the time we spent in Camp III. But I will try to serve my accounts better cooked. The largest item in a balance of hours, even the least frank, will always be sleep. Here I prefer to make the entry under the heading Bed. This will enable me to write off at once a minimum of fourteen or a maximum of sixteen hours, leaving me only eight to ten hours to account for. It is also a simplification, because I am able by this means to avoid a doubtful and perhaps an ugly heading, Dozing. No one will ask me to describe exactly what goes on in bed. At Camp III it will be understood that supper is always included, but not breakfast, for as the breakfasting hour is the most agreeable in the day, it must be spent out-of-doors in the warm sun. Supper, unlike most activities, takes less time than in civilised life. Wasted minutes allow the food to cool and the grease to congeal. The porter serving us would not want to be standing about longer than necessary, and the whole performance was expeditious. Perhaps the fashion of eating among mountaineers is also more wolfish than among civilised men. The remaining 13½ or 14½ hours were not all spent in sleep. Probably on the night of May 13–14 I slept at least ten hours after the exertions of our ascent to the North Col. But though one sleeps well and is refreshed by sleep in a tent at an altitude to which one is sufficiently acclimatised, the outside world is not so very far away. However well accustomed to such scenes, one does not easily lose a certain excitement from the mere presence beyond the open tent-door of the silent power of frost suspending even the life of the mountains, and of the black ridges cutting the space of stars. The slow-spinning web of unconscious thought is nearer consciousness. One wakes in the early morning with the mind more definitely gathered about a subject, looks out to find the stars still bright, or dim in the first flush of dawn, and because the subject, whatever it be, and however nearly connected with the one absorbing problem, commands less concentrated attention—for the unwilled effort of the mind is more dispersed—one may often fall asleep once more and stay in a light intermittent slumber until the bright sun is up and the tent begins to be warm again. No sleeper, so far as I know on this second expedition, could compete either for quantity or quality with the sleep of Guy Bullock on the first; but all, perhaps with different habits from either his or mine, but at all events all who spent several nights at this camp or higher, slept well and were refreshed by sleep, and I hope they were no less grateful than I for those blessed nights. [Illustration: PEAK, 23,180 FEET (KELLAS’ DARK ROCK PEAK) FROM THE RONGBUK GLACIER ABOVE CAMP II. ]