The weeks which followed them were comparative bliss, not because later
our conditions were better--they were far worse--because we were
callous. I for one had come to that point of suffering at which I did not
really care if only I could die without much pain. They talk of the
heroism of the dying--they little know--it would be so easy to die, a
dose of morphia, a friendly crevasse, and blissful sleep. The trouble is
to go on....
It was the darkness that did it. I don't believe minus seventy
temperatures would be bad in daylight, not comparatively bad, when you
could see where you were going, where you were stepping, where the sledge
straps were, the cooker, the primus, the food; could see your footsteps
lately trodden deep into the soft snow that you might find your way back
to the rest of your load; could see the lashings of the food bags; could
read a compass without striking three or four different boxes to find one
dry match; could read your watch to see if the blissful moment of getting
out of your bag was come without groping in the snow all about; when it
would not take you five minutes to lash up the door of the tent, and five
hours to get started in the morning....
But in these days we were never less than four hours from the moment when
Bill cried "Time to get up" to the time when we got into our harness.
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