eight o'clock
It impressed Stephen , and he consented at once to `` try their luck '' at Tlemcen . Early in the morning of the second day after the coming of Victoria 's letter , the two men started in Nevill 's yellow car , the merry-eyed chauffeur charmed at the prospect of a journey worth doing . He was tired , he remarked to Stephen , `` de tous ces petits voyages d'une demi-heure , comme les tristes promenades des enfants , sans une seule aventure . '' They had bidden good-bye to Lady MacGregor , and most of the family animals , overnight , and it was hardly eight o'clock when they left Djenan el Djouad , for the day 's journey would be long . A magical light , like the light in a dream , gilded the hills of the Sahel ; and beyond lay the vast plain of the Metidja , a golden bowl , heaped to its swelling rim of mountains with the fairest fruits of Algeria . The car rushed through a world of blossoms , fragrant open country full of flowers , and past towns that did their small utmost to bring France into the land which France had conquered . Boufarik , with its tall monument to a brave French soldier who fought against tremendous odds : Blidah , a walled and fortified mixture of garrison and orange-grove , with a market-place like a scene in the `` Arabian Nights '' : Orleansville , modern and ostentatiously French , built upon ruins of vast antiquity , and hotter than all other towns in the dry cup of the Chelif Valley : Relizane , Perrégaux , and finally Oran -LRB- famed still for its old Spanish forts -RRB- , which they reached by moonlight .