three o'clock in the afternoon
For several hours after his brief fit of talking Blake made no effort to resume the conversation nor any desire to answer Philip when the latter spoke to him . A number of times it struck Philip that he was going the pace that would tire out both man and beast before night . He knew that in Blake 's shaggy head there was a brain keenly and dangerously alive , and he noted the extreme effort he was making to cover distance with a satisfaction that was not unmixed of suspicion . By three o'clock in the afternoon they were thirty-five miles from the cabin in which Blake had become a prisoner . All that distance they had traveled through a treeless barren without a sign of life . It was between three and four when they began to strike timber once more , and Philip asked himself if it had been Blake 's scheme to reach this timber before dusk . In places the spruce and banskian pine thickened until they formed dark walls of forest and whenever they approached these patches Philip commanded Blake to take the middle of the river .