about five
o'clock in the afternoon
Meantime the engineer arrayed himself in dry clothing . `` Well , well , '' said he , as he came out of the cabin , `` I did n't know we had a group of experts aboard . I supposed the aviator that went up yesterday knew all about it , but this help will save us about an hour 's time , and we have n't been getting any too much speed out of her to-day . '' The engine behaved excellently for the rest of the day , and about five o'clock in the afternoon they landed at the town of Circle . They found it a village of a couple of hundred , the supply point for the Birch Creek mining region . At an early hour the next morning they were again on the bosom of the river , the engine having again been cleaned and `` nursed '' as the engineer described it for the day . The river had begun to widen and the bank to fall to almost a dead level just before reaching Circle the night before , and they now entered upon a dreary expanse of tundra or flat marsh land covered with a meager growth of willow and stunted birch .