four o'clock in the afternoon
The three women at once went groping along the sand with their feet , and not in vain . First one , and then another encountered a hard object which proved to be similar in substance to the one found by Blanche ; and in a quarter of an hour they had between them collected upwards of a dozen of them , though one only -- found by Mrs Staunton -- exceeded in size that of the first discovery . Then , feeling somewhat chilled by their long immersion , they returned to _ terra firma _ , and were soon once more wending their way homeward . In passing through the wood they contrived to lose their way ; but , as it happened , this proved of but slight consequence , as though they eventually came out at a point nearly a mile distant from the pathway which they had followed in the morning , they were quite as near the settlement as they would have been had they faithfully retraced their original footsteps ; and by four o'clock in the afternoon they found themselves once more within the shelter of the walls of Staunton Cottage , greatly fatigued , it is true , by their long ramble , but with an elasticity of spirits and a sense of renewed life to which they had long been strangers . Meanwhile the party at the shipyard had been thrown into a state of unwonted excitement by an incident which at one moment threatened to have a tragic termination . A strong gang of men were at work upon the rock -- all , indeed , who were left upon the island , excepting some dozen or fourteen , most of whom were employed in providing for the daily wants of the others , such as in baking bread , cleaning out the huts , airing bedding , and so on -- and the scene at the mouth of the harbour was therefore a tolerably busy one . Captain Staunton was in charge of the ship-building operations , with Kit as foreman-in-chief , while Rex and Brook were superintending operations at the battery ; the former , with a roll of rough-and-ready drawings in his hand , `` setting out '' the work , while the latter overlooked the construction of a lime-kiln .