About noon
All day they struggled through brushwood and clambered over rocks , pushing their way further and further into the desolate heart of the island . Here and there they found traces of the hunters , the bones of a slain ox , or the marks of feet in a morass , and once , towards evening , it seemed to some of them that they heard the distant rattle of guns . That night they spent under the trees , and pushed on again with the earliest light . About noon they came to the huts of bark , which , the Carib told them , were the camp of the hunters , but they were silent and deserted . No doubt their occupants were away at the hunt and would return in the evening , so Craddock and his men lay in ambush in the brushwood around them . But no one came , and another night was spent in the forest . Nothing more could be done , and it seemed to Craddock that after the two days ' absence it was time that he returned to his ship once more .