about midday
And then we knew that the towering mass in front of us could be nothing else than a volcano , either dormant or extinct , for there was no sign of smoke rising from its summit , although the nature of the soil around us , consisting as it did of pumice stone , scoriae , and ancient lava , left no doubt as to the character of the mountain . And now began the really difficult part of our task . Although the ground was entirely bare of vegetation the surface was so exceedingly rough and broken , and so loose , that progress was very slow , becoming more so with every forward step ; for while the lower slopes of the mountain were of quite an easy grade , they rapidly steepened as we advanced , until the last five hundred feet or so approached so nearly to the perpendicular that at length further progress seemed to be all but impossible , and we could only advance a yard or two at a time , climbing upon hands and knees , with short spells of rest between the spurts . But when at length , about midday , we finally reached the summit , it was unanimously agreed that our toil was amply rewarded , for the entire island lay stretched out at our feet like a map , with mile after mile of the blue , foam-flecked ocean reaching far away to the horizon on every hand , while away in the south-western quarter , a hundred miles distant perhaps , there appeared a faint film of misty blue which indicated the presence of other land . But this last was much too distant to interest us in any way ; it was our own particular domain that absorbed all our attention , and the first thing that we observed about it was that its length ran practically east and west . It was of very irregular shape , the most graphic way of describing it being , perhaps , to say that in general outline it somewhat resembled a rather acute-angled triangle , with two large pieces bitten out of it near the base , one bite having been taken out of the north side , while the other and larger had removed the south-west angle and formed the bay in which lay the wreck . The acute angle pointed toward the east , and the sides of the triangle were much twisted and broken .