about two o’clock
The towering rock , the houses above houses , one man 's doorstep rising behind his neighbour 's chimney , the gardens hung up by one edge to the sky , the vegetables growing on apparently almost vertical planes , the unity of the whole island as a solid and single block of limestone four miles long , were no longer familiar and commonplace ideas . All now stood dazzlingly unique and white against the tinted sea , and the sun flashed on infinitely stratified walls of oolite , The melancholy ruins Of cancelled cycles , ... with a distinctiveness that called the eyes to it as strongly as any spectacle he had beheld afar . After a laborious clamber he reached the top , and walked along the plateau towards the eastern village . The time being about two o'clock , in the middle of the summer season , the road was glaring and dusty , and drawing near to his father 's house he sat down in the sun . He stretched out his hand upon the rock beside him . It felt warm . That was the island 's personal temperature when in its afternoon sleep as now .