six o'clock
It seemed good to the boys to feel that soon they would be at San Cristobal , their last stop before the final hop . They flew along with the throttle wide open for the next hour , eager to make up for the delay caused by the storm and the rescue of Torrey . Then they reduced the speed a little , to make sure they would not overheat the engine , but still they made good time . Shortly before six o'clock that afternoon they sighted a blue haze which a little later developed into a group of several islands . These they knew , by consulting their chart , were the Gallapagos , the home of the largest land-turtles ever known , monsters so enormous that one of them could walk off with two half-grown boys on his broad back . There are over two thousand volcano cones in these islands , and soon our friends were almost in the midst of them . On all sides and at all distances were rugged peaks one hundred to two thousand feet high , rising sheer from a rose-pink sea over which the declining sun played ravishingly .