nearly eleven
o'clock at night
At the head of one of these bays , had they but known it , there were salmon rivers where fishing-boats occasionally stopped ; but all that they could do was to use the best of their wisdom and their strength , and they kept on , steadily pulling , believing that the tide had turned , whereas in truth they were going down the coast still with the tide and approaching the mouth of the vast crooked bay known as Kaludiak , half-way down the east coast of the great island . Thus they were leaving behind a possible place of rescue . Although their first fright had in time somewhat worn away , they were now tired , hungry , thirsty , and , in fact , almost upon the point of exhaustion . All at once , at an hour which in the United States would probably have been taken to be just before sundown , but which really was nearly eleven o'clock at night , a change in the contour of the coast caused the wind to whip around once more . The fog , broken into thousands of white , ropy wreaths , was swept away upward . There stretched off to the right the entrance of a vast bay , with many arms , whose blue waters , far less turbulent than these of the open sea , led back deep into the heart of a noble mountain panorama of snow-covered peaks and flattened valleys . `` It 's almost like Resurrection Bay , or Valdez Harbor , '' said Rob .