refused to go below 120, and if I moved would jump up to 135. I don't
know where it went on the actual climb. So far as I could determine,
it did not go below 120 for four days and nights.

On the morning of October 15th we got up at three o'clock. Hot sweet
tea was the one thing we all craved. The tea-pot was found to be
frozen solid, although it had been hung up in the tent. It took an
hour to thaw and the tea was just warm enough for practical purposes
when I made an awkward move in the crowded tent and kicked over the
tea-pot! Never did men keep their tempers better under more aggravating
circumstances. Not a word of reproach or indignation greeted my
clumsy accident, although poor Corporal Gamarra, who was lying on the
down side of the tent, had to beat a hasty retreat into the colder
(but somewhat drier) weather outside. My clumsiness necessitated
a delay of nearly an hour in starting. While we were melting more
frozen snow and re-making the tea, we warmed up some pea soup and
Irish stew. Tucker and I managed to eat a little. Coello and Gamarra
had no stomachs for anything but tea. We decided to leave the Tucker
tent at the 20,000 foot level, together with most of our outfit and
provisions. From here to the top we were to carry only such things
as were absolutely necessary. They included the Mummery tent with
pegs and poles, the mountain-mercurial barometer, the two Watkins
aneroids, the hypsometer, a pair of Zeiss glasses, two 3A kodaks,
six films, a sling psychrometer, a prismatic compass and clinometer,
a Stanley pocket level, an eighty-foot red-strand mountain rope,
three ice axes, a seven-foot flagpole, an American flag and a Yale
flag. In order to avoid disaster in case of storm, we also carried
four of Silver's self-heating cans of Irish stew and mock-turtle soup,
a cake of chocolate, and eight hard-tack, besides raisins and cubes
of sugar in our pockets. Our loads weighed about twenty pounds each.