ten o'clock
Plainly he made every effort , not to retard our progress , but he panted like a seal , and soon I insisted on his stopping to rest . In short , it was evident that the ascent of the Great Eyrie would require far more time than we had estimated . We had expected to reach the foot of the rocky wall before eleven o'clock , but we now saw that mid-day would still find us several hundred feet below it . Toward ten o'clock , after repeated attempts to discover some more practicable route , after numberless turnings and returnings , one of the guides gave the signal to halt . We found ourselves at last on the upper border of the heavy wood . The trees , more thinly spaced , permitted us a glimpse upward to the base of the rocky wall which constituted the true Great Eyrie . `` Whew ! ''