three in the morning
The dreams to which they had given utterance had uplifted him . `` That 's all right , '' said Linforth , and he turned back into the hut . But he remembered afterwards that it was Shere Ali who had protested against the possibility of their association being broken . They came out from the hut again at half-past three in the morning and looked up to a cloudless starlit sky which faded in the east to the colour of pearl . Above their heads some knobs of rock stood out upon the thin crest of the buttress against the sky . In the darkness of a small couloir underneath the knobs Peter was already ascending . The traverse of the Meije even for an experienced mountaineer is a long day 's climb .