about three o'clock in the afternoon
Once or twice Abel was on the point of remonstrating with him , but for the sake of peace he held his tongue and waited , in the hope that the day would bring forth some measure of relief . But nothing happened that morning , and the hope died within him . Late that day , when the pace had slowed down almost to a crawl , they stumbled across the place by the simplest kind of accident . They had been dropping down to lower levels the greater part of the day , and somewhere about three o'clock in the afternoon -- they were not quite sure of the hour , since the sun was masked by the trees -- they found themselves in what looked like a narrow gully . Both sides of it were lined with thick bushes of golden wattle that shut out all view on either hand . There were shadows galore in this narrow gully , and the place itself looked almost as dark as the entrance to the Pit . Cumshaw , who had a classical education and had not been able to forget it , any more than the fact that he had once been a gentleman , murmured under his breath .