ten o'clock
An occasional soldier from the _ cuartel _ , with flapping straw hat , without coat or shoes , hurried by , balancing his long gun like a lance in one hand . From every density of the foliage the giant tree frogs sounded their loud and irritating clatter . Further out , where the by-ways perished at the brink of the jungle , the guttural cries of marauding baboons and the coughing of the alligators in the black estuaries fractured the vain silence of the wood . By ten o'clock the streets were deserted . The oil lamps that had burned , a sickly yellow , at random corners , had been extinguished by some economical civic agent . Coralio lay sleeping calmly between toppling mountains and encroaching sea like a stolen babe in the arms of its abductors . Somewhere over in that tropical darkness -- perhaps already threading the profundities of the alluvial lowlands -- the high adventurer and his mate were moving toward land 's end .