Five o'clock
Little they said . The beauty and majesty of night now -- seen again after long absence -- a hundred times more solemn than they had ever known it , kept the two Americans from speech . And the old man , buried in his own thoughts , sat by the fire , burning with a fever of impatient longings for the dawn . Five o'clock . Now all across the eastern sky , shrouded as it was with the slow , silent mist-wreaths rising ghostly from the Abyss , delicate pink and pearl-gray tints were spreading , shading above to light blues and to purples of exquisite depth and clarity . No cloud flecked the sky , the wondrous sky of early spring . Dawn , pure as on the primal day , was climbing from the eastern depths .