eight o'clock
From the glare in their eyes at passing it came over him that either he or Knute would recross the mountains partnerless . The trail was too narrow for these other men . He shrank from the toil and agony he felt was coming to him through this ; then , with it , there came the burning gold-hunger ; the lust that drives starving , broken wrecks onward unremittingly , over misty hills , across the beds of lava and the forbidden tundra ; on , into the new diggings . It neared eight o'clock , and , although darkness was far distant , the chill that follows the sun fell sharply . As they swung out on to the river their fatigue had dropped away and they moved with the steady , loose gait of the hardened `` musher . '' Buck looked at his watch . They had been gone an hour .