Poyning had snatched the binoculars out of my hands and was looking for himself. It was the last thing he did that day. His strength, which he had forced to uphold him by an effort of will for which I should never have given him credit when he entered our lives at Nanking, now broke down utterly; he fell in a heap, unconscious, and though we managed to bring him to with the last drain of brandy we possessed, he was unable to move hand or foot. He lay in the snow crying like a child. It wasn't emotion--just his nerve-control completely gone. Philipson looked at him and at me. 'It is a pity,' he said. 'We must push on for the hour of dusk that is left--it may mean a couple of thousand feet downwards. I cannot let him sleep here.' Then without another word Saunders Philipson picked up Stephen Poyning and carried him in his arms. Lo Eng and I shared his pack in addition to our own loads. It was in vain for me to offer to take a turn with Poyning. Philipson grunted angrily. 'Keep your breath for breathing, Mirlees,' he snapped. 'It is as much as the three of you can do to move as it is. We must get on the fastest we can.' I picked up his rifle and took the lead myself, feeling the way as he had done. At the end of the gully we had plainly come to the end of the heights, and there, deep down before us, we could see a blur of light. It was gloriously easier going now. The mountain side was steep, but of a fairly good surface, and we made capital headway. The relief was unspeakable, and came with startling quickness as we worked down off that frightful roof of the world into the denser air below. We filled our lungs with it again and again, and I felt it intoxicate me like wine. Saunders Philipson carried his burden for fully an hour and a half, and only stopped then, I am convinced, because dark had fallen. We pitched camp and put Poyning to bed, then turned in ourselves. There was no danger in sleep now. We lay down in our sheepskins and slept till the sun was high in the heavens of a glorious day. And now we experienced for the first time the full thrill of our discovery. We were at the gates of an unknown land, a valley in this tremendous upheaved region of Asia which had remained hidden from the rest of the world all down through the ages. From where we stood outside our tent we could see the whole depression in a wonderful bird's eye view; above us, stupendous peaks towering into the sky, snow-clad and dazzling and looking not a musket-shot away; below, a long even expanse of snow running straight down to the line where snow left off and green vegetation began; farther down still, the cup of the valley, ringed round completely by mountain slopes like the one we stood on, a smiling green hollow, with a large lake in the middle of it and evident signs of human habitation. We could see through the glasses that the buildings of the city were uniformly white, but we were as yet too far away to descry anything more definite about them.