sad interest, feeling certain that the bitter wind would freeze him to death before morning.[1]
At 1 a.m., Zurfltth, who had kept awake to bemoan the Tartar's slow and pitiable decease, crept out of the tent to investigate how this process was getting on. A few minutes later, with his teeth chattering, but none the less with real delight in face and voice, he told me that not merely was the Tartar still alive, but, bare feet and all, appeared to be enjoying a refreshing sleep! Zurfluh's mind relieved on this point, he engaged in a protracted struggle with the fire. The Bezingi wood always requires much coaxing, but at 1 a.m. it would try the patience of a saint and the skill of one of his Satanic majesty's most practised stokers. Unluckily the little stream, on which we had counted for a perennial supply of water, was frozen to its core, and the weary process of melting ice had to be undertaken. My boots were also frozen, and putting them on proved to be the most arduous and by far the
- ↑ Our camp was on the screes at a point one inch from the bottom, and one and three-quarter inches from the left side of the illustration opposite. We ascended to the snow col still further to the left, and then ascended the mountain diagonally to the great secondary ridge on the left of the long couloir lying between the two summits. Owing to great foreshortening our traverse of the face appears almost horizontal; in actual fact it was nearly a direct ascent. The same cause makes the slopes look materially less steep than they really are. Even the snow slopes in the immediate foreground are very steep.
