This splendid offer, which showed so clearly the noble spirit which animated the troops, was eagerly accepted by the British officer, and on the 3rd of April Captain Borrodaile set out from Teeru to cross the pass with his spirited little body of native troops. The snow was very deep and the work of marching through it excessively heavy. A more arduous task than the men had voluntarily set themselves to do, it would be hard to imagine; but hard though it was, to their everlasting credit, the feat was successfully accomplished. Sledges were at first tried, but they had to be given up as useless. Narrow as these sledges were, a single man track was still narrower and extremely uneven with great holes every few steps, so that they could not be hauled easily and were abandoned. All day long the men struggled through the snow with the guns, till between nine and ten o'clock in the evening it was so dark that the track could scarcely be seen, and it was then decided that if the men were to get in at all, those behind would have to drop their loads. This was accordingly done, ammunition boxes, etc., were stacked in the snow, and the troops marched on to Langar, the camping spot at the foot of the pass. There was only one small hut in which the more exhausted men were placed, and the remainder being without tents had to remain in the open for the whole night. The men with Captain Borrodaile were Sikhs from the plains of the Punjab, brought up for generations in one of the hottest climates in the world, and they were now called upon, after the severe struggles of this and previous days, to spend a night on the snow at nearly 12,000 feet above sea-level, and with the thermometer somewhere about zero (Fahrenheit). Sleep for most of them was out of the question; the men as far as possible gathered round small fires which had been made up from the brushwood to be obtained near the camping spot, and wearily awaited the dawn and final struggle of the coming day.