twelve o'clock
The still , colossal mountains took him back again like a returning prodigal , and vaguely , without knowing why , he yielded to their influence -- their immensity , their enormous power , crude and blind , reflecting themselves in his own nature , huge , strong , brutal in its simplicity . And this , though he only saw the mountains at night . They appeared far different then than in the daytime . At twelve o'clock he came out of the mine and lunched on the contents of his dinner-pail , sitting upon the embankment of the track , eating with both hands , and looking around him with a steady ox-like gaze . The mountains rose sheer from every side , heaving their gigantic crests far up into the night , the black peaks crowding together , and looking now less like beasts than like a company of cowled giants . In the daytime they were silent ; but at night they seemed to stir and rouse themselves . Occasionally the stamp-mill stopped , its thunder ceasing abruptly .