ten o'clock
Could it be that the three Buddhists had had a craft in readiness off the coast , and had embarked with their prisoners for the East ? The direction of their track seemed at first to favour this supposition , for it lay in the line of the upper end of the bay , but it ended by branching off and striking directly inland . Clearly the ocean was not to be our terminus . By ten o'clock we had walked close upon twelve miles , and were compelled to call a halt for a few minutes to recover our breath , for the last mile or two we had been breasting the long , wearying slope of the Wigtown hills . From the summit of this range , which is nowhere more than a thousand feet in height , we could see , looking northward , such a scene of bleakness and desolation as can hardly be matched in any country . Right away to the horizon stretched the broad expanse of mud and of water , mingled and mixed together in the wildest chaos , like a portion of some world in the process of formation . Here and there on the dun-coloured surface of this great marsh there had burst out patches of sickly yellow reeds and of livid , greenish scum , which only served to heighten and intensify the gloomy effect of the dull , melancholy expanse .