The ascent took six hours, and when they reached the peak, near midnight, the sky grew light too late to help them.

‘Oh God.’ Ansell lay back with his eyes shut. ‘I’m so tired.

‘Me too.’

Silence.

‘What now?’

‘It’ll take them eight hours to reach us.’

‘They won’t come tonight.’

‘They’ve got to. They know where we are, they know we’re tired. They won’t get so good a chance again.’

‘They must be tired too.’

‘Not as tired as we are. They’re hunting, we’re running.

‘Now I know how the animals feel.’

‘That’s something in your favour.’

Silence.

‘So what do we do?’

‘Sleep. Four hours. That’ll leave us well ahead. If we don’t sleep, we go nowhere.’

‘Good. Give me the gun.’

‘What?’

Ansell took the gun, fiddled with it, and pushed it back to MacConnachie.

‘It’s still on single-shot. Good night.’

He rolled over to sleep. MacConnachie chuckled.

‘Food first.’

‘You’re joking.’

‘We eat, then we sleep.’

‘Oh, come on.’

‘Do what you’re bloody well told!’

Ansell sat up, muttering mutinously, while MacConnachie unroped the suitcase in the darkness and opened it.

‘I don’t see what the bloody hell…’

‘Shut up!’

MacConnachie was groping about in the suitcase, trying to identify one tin against another in the pale light. He suddenly said,

‘What order are they in?’

‘What order are what in?’

‘The tins, for Christ’s sake!’

‘What do you mean, order?’

‘Well, you put ’em in order, didn’t you? How do we tell one from another at night – strike a bloody match?’

‘Are you taking the mickey?’

‘You stupid little bastard – don’t you think of the simplest things?’

‘What does it matter?’

‘It matters whether we have hot soup or cold soup; when we can light a fire, and when we can’t!’

‘I’m not hungry anyway!’

‘You’ll bloody well eat when I tell you!’

Both men lost their anger simultaneously. After a moment, Ansell murmured,

‘You can tell them apart by feeling their bottoms.’

‘It’s their contents I’m interested in, not their sex.’

‘For God’s sake, look!’ Ansell rummaged in the case. ‘The big one’s condensed milk. That’s that one. The soup have got rings round the bottom. The meat haven’t. That’s meat.’

‘Why the hell didn’t you say so?’

‘I didn’t think of it.’

‘Well done.’

MacConnachie tore open the tin with a knife, and gouged out a hunk of meat for Ansell.

‘Half now, half before we set out.’

‘Thanks.’

MacConnachie then cut out his own piece, and they sat eating. Ansell said,

‘It’s pretty nauseating.’

‘Be grateful.’

‘I am.’

They had a drink each, and slept; but not before, at MacConnachie’s insistence, they had untied their slacks from round their waists, put them on, and then their uniform jackets. This last function MacConnachie had to perform for Ansell, who slept on his feet like a scratchily exhausted infant.

Under the blanket, they huddled together for warmth.

It seemed to Ansell that he had barely lost consciousness when, four hours later, MacConnachie was pulling off the blanket and shaking him.