CHAPTER XII
THREE ASCENTS
Day!
Faster and more fast;
O'er night's brim, day boils at last:
Boils pure gold o'er the cloud-cup's brim,
Where spurting and suppressed it lay,
For not a froth-flake touched the rim
Of yonder gap in the solid grey
Of the eastern cloud, an hour away:
But forth one wavelet, then another, curled,
Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed,
Rose reddened, and its seething breast
Flickered in bounds, grew gold, then overflowed the world.
For two days after our return from the Haast bivouac the rain came down in torrents, and we had reason to congratulate ourselves on not waiting in the bivouac to make a second attempt. The chief items on my climbing programme for the season had now been attempted, and I was in the cheerful state of not particularly minding how I put in the next ten days. Under these circumstances the suggestion that I should join a pleasant party who wished to cross to the West Coast, by Graham's Saddle, and return via the Copland Pass, met with my entire approval. At the end of the ten days I was expecting my greatest friend to arrive from Sydney; we then proposed to spend a fortnight more in the mountains and return home together.
On Wednesday, December 21st, the weather cleared,
