noon
`` Dry up ! '' sharply interrupted Rand , to whom this speech recalled his brother 's half-forgotten strangeness . `` Look at the prospect . '' In the full noon of a cloudless day , beneath them a tumultuous sea of pines surged , heaved , rode in giant crests , stretched and lost itself in the ghostly , snow-peaked horizon . The thronging woods choked every defile , swept every crest , filled every valley with its dark-green tilting spears , and left only Table Mountain sunlit and bare . Here and there were profound olive depths , over which the gray hawk hung lazily , and into which blue jays dipped . A faint , dull yellowish streak marked an occasional watercourse ; a deeper reddish ribbon , the mountain road and its overhanging murky cloud of dust .