Setting Camps

EXT.  BASE CAMP TO CAMP II - NEXT DAY
GEORGE, SANDY, ODELL and HAZARD climb the same route as the first party the day before, along with the 50 porters who mutinied.  They have left BEETHAM behind, who is still not well.  GEORGE and ODELL herd the men across the glacier carefully, start up themselves with energy.  Behind them, SANDY takes some of the loads of several of the porters, so that he is carrying a standard porter's load himself. 
He makes steady progress up the moraine beside the porters, with HAZARD behind him harrying stragglers.  The weather is very cold and windy, and the wind is against them sweeping from the east.  They arrive at Camp II where there are a few tents set up and a huge dump of stores, with a great number of men milling about. 
NORTON, SOMERVELL, SHEBBEARE, AND GEOFFREY are not present, only the GURKHA NCO and his two assistants.  On the arrival of the party they come out of their tent.  It is LATE AFTERNOON and the wind is now howling.  There are plainly not enough tents for all the men.
NCO
(to GEORGE)
Good afternoon, sahib.
GEORGE
(irritably)
Good afternoon.  Why the bloody hell are all these men here?  What have you been doing?  Why aren't the sangars built? Are these men supposed to sleep in the open? Did they sleep in the open last night?
NCO
Yes Sahib, they did.  They are here because they could not go on to the next camp.  We did not have the energy to built the sangars, Sahib.  So the men made do with blankets.
GEORGE runs a hand through his hair.
GEORGE
BLANKETS! BLANKETS! In the open! It was minus 10 degrees last night! Are you mad?
His face is murderous.
GEORGE
Blankets! While you slept in your tent I suppose with your goons!
He is completely disgusted.  ODELL comes up.
ODELL
Easy, old man, they're done in.
GEORGE
(angrily)
And so will they be completely, with another night out in the open!
GEORGE looks at the NCO with contempt.
GEORGE
(to ODELL)
We need to get some tents up and these poor men warm and fed straightaway.
(Beat)
SANDY!
SANDY is immediately behind him.
SANDY
I'm right here.
GEORGE swings round.
GEORGE
Good man yourself.  Let's get started on the sangars.  Perhaps our good NCO can learn by example.  Are you up to it?
SANDY looks cold and weary.
SANDY
Certainly.
GEORGE
Thank you.  Odell, can you and Hazard get the stoves going and get these poor bastards something hot fixed up?
He runs his hand through his hair again.
ODELL
Will do, George.
GEORGE
Right.
GEORGE
(to the NCO)
I'll speak with you later.  Go do something useful!
He stalks off toward the pile of rubble that was meant to be built up into sangars [rock walls in the Tibetan manner, roofed with canvas].  SANDY follows him.  They build walls until darkness falls, with some of the porters joining in after a while.  GEORGE now glows with good cheer.
EXT.  CAMP II - EVENING
GEORGE shouts in the wind to SANDY, working beside him.
GEORGE
Lord, will you look at them!
He nods toward the porters putting up walls near by.
GEORGE
It's an extraordinary thing, watching the conversion of men from listlessness to the spirit of enterprise.  All they want is a good example for encouragement.
SANDY
You've given them that.
GEORGE
WE'VE given them that! Don't think I didn't notice you taking their loads up the moraine today.
He looks askance at SANDY, smiling.
SANDY
It seemed the right thing to do.
GEORGE
Exactly what I meant.
(beat)
Come on then, let's get these buildings up: Mallory and Irvine, Housewrights.  Do you think it would go?
He grins.  In the distance the porters, who are working on the walls of another hut, are singing.
EXT.  CAMP II - LATER THAT EVENING
The building has stopped for the night because it is now, at 6 pm, too dark to see.  SANDY goes off to his tent, holding a handkerchief to his face.  He has a nosebleed and is going to lie down. 
HAZARD asks at the door of the tent [a pair of MEADE tents aligned door to door] if he is all right, at which SANDY nods.  In the distance, GEORGE and ODELL climb up, scouting the route to Camp III.
INT.  NOEL'S TENT, CAMP II - NIGHT
GEORGE, SANDY, ODELL and HAZARD are having dinner with NOEL, who in a spirit of mischief has donned one of his old Tibetan chupas.  There is no camp table in his tent, but several low boxes pushed together, with all sitting about like Tibetans.  NOEL sits at the head of the 'table' pouring endless cups of tea and telling about his secret adventure into Tibet in 1913.  Everyone feels warm and welcome, despite the wind outside.
EXT.  CAMP II, 5 MAY - EARLY NEXT MORNING
A blizzard howls across the camp, blowing down some of the tents in the night.  HAZARD, ODELL, SANDY and GEORGE struggle out to put the porters' tents to rights for them.  They return to their own tents as the faint glimmer of dawn is seen on the horizon.
GEORGE flings himself onto this sleeping bag, too weary to get in.  Everyone crawls into their bags, without bothering to remove their boots.  They will be up in an hour.
GEORGE
What time is it?
He draws his arm down from above his head and squints at his watch.
ODELL
(yawning)
Four.
GEORGE
Bloody hell.
SANDY picks up the thermometer.
SANDY
And minus 20!
HAZARD
(mumbling)
What was that about hell freezing over, gentlemen?
ODELL
(smiles a little)
Go to sleep, John.
EXT.  CAMP II - LATER THAT MORNING
The glacier is covered with a layer of powder snow a foot deep.  The world is crystalline, sparkling, and very very cold.  There is no sign of the porters, nor of anyone moving about the camp.
INT.  TENT, CAMP II - CONTINUOUS
It is full daylight out before anyone stirs.  The ochre light and ominous low-slung walls of the tent tell their own story of the weather outside.  The men all seem to wake at once and move about under their sleeping bags like reluctant bears.
GEORGE looks at his watch.
GEORGE
Eight o'clock! My God, what an appalling night.
He sits up, ruffles his hair and squints at the others.
GEORGE
I say, ODELL! SANDY! HAZARD! Rise and shine! We must get the porters up.
HAZARD
Must we?
ODELL
They won't rouse themselves.  They're afraid of the cooker.
SANDY
Are you speaking of me?
HAZARD
Only very indirectly.
GEORGE
What's the temperature?
HAZARD
(as if in an aside in a Shakespeare play)
Morbid curiosity bids him ask...
SANDY
Thirty-one degrees of frost.
HAZARD
You had to ask.
ODELL
(sits up)
Where's Jeeves with tea?
He rummages round in his sleeping bag.
ODELL
My boots are frozen, INSIDE my bag.
GEORGE laces his boots inside his bag.
GEORGE
If that's all we have to bother with being frozen, we'll be lucky.
He looks up at the ominously bulging tent, then crawls out from his bag toward the door of the tent and unties the flaps.  A draft of frigid air rushes in.
EXT.  OUTSIDE THE TENT - CONTINUOUS
GEORGE is outside.  The tents are bowed with 6 and 8 inches of snow and the whole camp is a foot deep.  He wades through the powder to poke his head into NOEL's tent.  They have a brief conversation, then GEORGE is outdoors again, hurrying over to the Mess, which is a sangar. 
He lights the yak dung powered stove with some difficulty.  NOEL, ODELL and SANDY appear, take saucepans and gather snow to dump into the large pot for water for tea.  HAZARD rouses the cook (one of the NCO's assistants).  GEORGE stops setting out mugs for tea, and goes to rouse the porters in their various tents.
EXT.  TENT ON THE GLACIER - LATER THAT MORNING
NOEL and his porters are up the glacier from the Camp: a knot of eight men, black figures against the dazzling blue white seracs that form the walls of the moraine.
Below, GEORGE and ODELL divide up the porters into groups to go on ropes.  ODELL and SANDY each have six, HAZARD has eleven, and GEORGE has none.  One of the porters takes up a very light load, much lighter than he is capable of.  GEORGE shouts and threatens him with a fist in his face before he takes a proper load of necessary items.
GEORGE
The glacier, which had looked innocent enough the night before was far from innocent now.  The days, I suppose, had been too cold for melting, and these surfaces were hard, smooth, rounded ice, almost as hard as glass and with never a trace of roughness.  Between these projecting humps lay the new powdery snow.  We should have all we could do to reach Camp III.
MONTAGE
1) SANDY leading his group of porters up the gorge.  The porters stop every five minutes to catch their breaths.
2) The parties follow along the trough.  The walls are 100 ft high, with dazzling seracs.  GEORGE goes back and forth along the line, chivvying, encouraging or shouting at the porters as required.
3) They come out of the trough on to the open glacier and are blasted with the wind against them straight down from the North Col.  Every step is a fight.
4) The man behind SANDY on his rope hangs back.  They change loads.  GEORGE comes up and makes them change back.
5) The exhausted party arrives in Camp III in the late afternoon.  GEORGE's boots are frozen to his feet.
EXT.  CAMP III - LATE AFTERNOON
GEORGE
Our progress was a bitter experience.  But our arrival at Three was worse.  It was a queer sensation reviving memories of that scene, with the dud oxygen cylinders piled against the cairn which was built to commemorate the seven porters killed two years ago.  The whole place had changed less than I could have believed possible, and brought a shudder to my soul.
(beat)
The stores were not properly organised as we had been promised they were. 
There was nothing for soup, which all the men badly needed, and the jam and cheese, those quick energy-giving fillers, were frozen solid.  But our wonderful Kami, who stationed himself at III in wait for us, made up a wonderful meal of mutton and veg and coffee.  If it was not plentiful, at least it was warm and we could, after pitching the porters' tents, retire to our sleeping bags and take a well-deserved rest.
MONTAGE: EXT.  CAMP III - NEXT THREE DAYS
1) Blizzards.  Porters and men all suffer from altitude sickness.
2) GEORGE wakes in the middle of the night to remember high altitude sleeping bags for the porters left at Camp II. 
GEORGE leaves at dawn for Camp II, bringing up more bags, and meets a party of porters coming up to Camp III.
3) There are too many men at Camp III.  Some porters are sent down to Camp II.  NORTON, SOMERVELL and GEOFFREY arrive from Camp IV.
4) GEORGE shepherds men down to Camp II.
5) GEORGE goes back up to Camp III in a howling gale.  He spends the evening tucked up in a sleeping bag playing cards with NORTON, SOMERVELL, and GEOFFREY.  SANDY remains in the other half of the doubled Meade tent, working on one of the cookers.
EXT.  CAMP III TO CAMP II, 10 MAY - DAWN
There has been a howling gale, -21_F overnight.  The porters and men are all suffering from altitude sickness.  The camp is covered in snow.  GEORGE, GEOFFREY, and NORTON are out in the middle of the camp, with ice-axes, trying to measure the snow depth in various places.  Violent gusts of wind hamper their progress.  They retreat to the Meade tent.  They consume mugs of coffee, and discuss what to do next.
INT.  CAMP III.  TENT - NIGHT
GEOFFREY
Retreat down to Base is the only way to spare the porters.  They are not acclimatising at all.  You saw them this morning: worse sickness and altitude headache than any of us sahibs.  They're just not up to it.  Perhaps it's the unusually bad weather.
GEORGE
But we can expect the weather to improve now!  And if it doesn't, then we can decide to retreat down to Base.  It would be demoralising for all of us now to retreat all the down to base ~
He breaks off coughing.  He is suffering from the pervasive 'high altitude throat'.  He takes up his mug of coffee and drinks it down while NORTON counters.
NORTON toys with his watch-chain on the table.
NORTON
Mallory is right that morale would suffer.  It would be an admission that the weather is too much for us, and would spoil the game. 
NORTON
The weather could turn at any time and we don't want to be all the way down the mountain when it does.
He looks at them all.
NORTON
We know the hardest go in the lower camps is from II to III, but being at II is better than being at Base.
(beat)
But there's no reason for all of us to be up here.  It's very hard on the fuel supply.  Lower down we can make use of the yak dung rather than solid Meta, which we'll need at VI and VII.
GEOFFREY
Would you be willing to send the worst of the porters down with me tomorrow? We can keep those who are stronger at II, in case the weather should change.
NORTON
Absolutely! George, will you see the stronger ones down to II?
GEORGE
I will, and I'll take Sandy with me.  He's still got a headache and it might do him good to sleep lower.
NORTON
Good.  Then, if you gentlemen are game...
He turns to ODELL and SOMERVELL.
NORTON
We can slog up to IV and set up camp there, so the climbing teams can come up in a few days, weather permitting, and finish the good work.
ODELL
I'd be happy to.
SOMERVELL
Me too.
NORTON
Then it's settled. 
NORTON
Geoffrey, you can tell the sirdars to pick which of their men need to be at which camps, and tell them we'll start early tomorrow.
GEOFFREY
Thank you, sir.
INT.  CAMP II - EVENING
GEORGE is in a tent with BEETHAM and NOEL.  He sits crosslegged before an upturned box writing a letter, coughing now and then.  DAWA, his porter, pokes his head in the tent, and speaks in Hindi.
DAWA
I'm sorry to bother you, Sir.  There is a note from the Colonel.
GEORGE looks up, and DAWA brings the note.
GEORGE
(in Hindi)
Thank you.
INSERT: THE NOTE IN NORTON'S NEAT HAND.

Dear Mallory: Have decided to evacuate III for the present and retire all ranks to the Base Camp.  Everyone very seedy.  Weather terrible, morale low.  Please proceed tomorrow.  Norton.
EXT.  CAMP II TO BASE CAMP, 12-18 MAY
SEQUENCE OF SHOTS
1) The two parties move down the glacier to BASE CAMP.  At Base GEOFFREY organises the porters into hospital tents.  2) In SANDY's party one of the porters falls, breaking his leg, which at BASE CAMP is seen to by SOMERVELL. 
3) One of the porters has severely frostbitten feet, which need to be amputated, and another is suffering from cerebral oedema and dies before reaching BASE.  The weather does not improve, with the same blowing snow and threatening grey weather as higher on the mountain.
4) GEORGE is sharing NOEL's tent and paces continually among the photographic gear when he is not reorganising lists for the stocking of the camps or revising the climbing schedule.  He is still coughing and appears very ill and feverish.  NOEL watches him from his workbench with a keen eye.
5) SANDY is in his workshop tent with parts of NOEL's cine-camera motors all over the place.  He is making gadgets for it, and fitting bits together from defective motors to make a workable whole.  He is also making a ladder from large tent pegs and rope.
GEORGE
I was going through a hard time, like I never did in '22.  Our retreat has meant a big waste of time.  III being so disorganised and no one who had been at that altitude before to help contributed to the disaster of lost time.  I could not abide the waste of time.  The later we made the summit day, the greater the chance we would be caught by the monsoon.  I revised my schedule of the summit day to 28 May, but it felt so very late.