out difficulty
was my bull-terrier "Bill," a spotted dog of doubtful ancestry. He had
been given to me as a bull-terrier when he was only a little white rat
of a thing, and I had raised him at Bunji on tinned milk. He was a most
uncanny dog (the joke is unintentional), and it was commonly believed in
the force that his father was a tom cat. Poor Bill! Before he got to
Laspur he was so snow blind that until we got to Mastuj I had to open
his eyes for him every morning and bathe them with hot water before he
could see, and he was hardly well again a month later.

We got into camp that night before dusk, pretty well fagged and wet, and
as soon as the coolies came in with our kits, we scraped a hole in the
snow and pitched the colonel's small tent. In camp we found a few men
who had been placed in charge of some ammunition that had been left
behind for want of transport. This guard were mostly suffering a bit
from snow blindness, but were otherwise all right, as they had run up
shelters and had plenty of wood and their bedding. When I got at my kit,
I took out a bottle of quinine and dosed our servants and orderlies all
round, so that they should not have any excuse for getting fever, and
then took some myself for the same reason. We then laid out our bedding
in the tent, while the servants went into the hut, and turned in
immediately after dinner, and had a very comfortable night.

We were up before dawn the next morning, and, as we had slept in our
clothes, it was not long before we had had breakfast and struck camp. By
6 A.M. we were climbing the ascent to the pass. There was a wind
whistling straight in our faces, and I had no idea anything could be so
cold; it simply went clean through you, and I quite expected to hear my
ribs sing like an Aeolian harp. When we got on to the pass, the sun rose
and the wind dropped quite suddenly, and presently we had taken off our
greatcoats on account of the heat. After going about an hour, I began to
suffer from mountain sickness, a curious and distinctly unpleasant
sensation, very much like having a rope tied tightly round one's chest
and back, and the shortness of breath necessitating a halt every hundred
yards or so. Colonel Kelly did not suffer from it at all, but trudged
along without a halt the whole way. That is the only time I have ever
suffered from mountain sickness, and I have crossed the Shandur both
before and since, as also other passes, without feeling any
inconvenien