eleven o'clock in the evening
He took an angling course , which would require him to move five or six hundred feet up the river before he reached the water . He had left his sabre where his companion had removed it ; but he still wore his belt , which he had replaced after he came to his senses ; and the small revolver was suspended where the hip pocket would have been if his trousers had been provided with one . He had nothing on that impeded his movements . Their slow progress in `` snaking '' it for so long a distance led the lieutenant to believe it must be ten or eleven o'clock in the evening . He continued his march on the diagonal of the slope , but with the greatest difficulty ; and he often had to stop and rest from the exertion of the struggle with the mud . At the end of an hour , as Deck judged it might be , he had made about one-third of the distance to the water , and halted to recover his breath . At this pause in the descent Fronklyn came up with him .