ten o'clock
He staggered to his feet again , but stepped on his own blood and fell . And then , feeling his blood trickling down his breast and his strength going , with one last effort he put up his hands and seizing the throat , fastened his fingers like iron rivets around the windpipe . And then -- with the long , loud , hoarse , despairing roar with which a man , his mouth half full of water , sinks far out in the ocean -- he fell again . IT was ten o'clock that morning of mid-May . The rain was over . Clouds and mists were gone , leaving an atmosphere of purest crystal . The sun floated a globe of gold in the yielding blue .