midnight
The earthquake that came with the spring of 1932 was on . He was nauseated with that deathly sickness that only an earthquake gives , and he dropped breathlessly in the shelter of a date palm while the earth beneath him rolled and groaned in agony . A deeper roar was rising above all other sounds , and Connell looked up at the nearby top of Sentinel Mountain . The stars of the desert land showed clear ; the grim blackness of Sentinel 's lone peak rose abruptly from the sand of the desert floor in darker silhouette against the velvet of a midnight sky . And the mountain was roaring . Softened by the distance , the deep , grumbling bass sang thunderingly through and above the other noises of the night , as if old Sentinel itself were voicing its remonstrance against this disturbance of its age-long rest . The grumbling died to a clatter of falling boulders a hundred yards away at the mountain 's base , and Connell 's eyes discerned a puff of vaporous gray , a cloud of wind-blown dust , high up on the mountain 's flank .