noon
`` Here 's where we shall stay for a while . You and the men are to cut a number of these pine trees for a house . Better pick out the little ones , about three or four inches through : they 're easier handled . I 'll be back by noon . '' We set to work then in the roaring , steaming valley with the vapour swirling about us , sometimes concealing us , sometimes half revealing us gigantic , again in the utterness of exposure showing us dwindled pigmies against the magnitudes about us . The labour was not difficult . By the time Darrow returned we had a pile of the saplings ready for his next direction .