six o’clock
`` See the advantage of being put on short allowance ! '' moralized the doctor . `` It is not great , after all , '' retorted Kennedy ; `` and if I were never again to have the pleasure of drinking water , I should agree on condition that I should never be deprived of it . '' At six o'clock the balloon was floating over the palm-trees . They were two shrivelled , stunted , dried-up specimens of trees -- two ghosts of palms -- without foliage , and more dead than alive . Ferguson examined them with terror . At their feet could be seen the half-worn stones of a spring , but these stones , pulverized by the baking heat of the sun , seemed to be nothing now but impalpable dust .