eleven o'clock
At the approach of evening we marched again , and , to cut a long story short , by daylight next morning found ourselves upon the lowest slopes of Sheba 's left breast , for which we had been steadily steering . By this time our water was exhausted once more , and we were suffering severely from thirst , nor indeed could we see any chance of relieving it till we reached the snow line far , far above us . After resting an hour or two , driven to it by our torturing thirst , we went on , toiling painfully in the burning heat up the lava slopes , for we found that the huge base of the mountain was composed entirely of lava beds belched from the bowels of the earth in some far past age . By eleven o'clock we were utterly exhausted , and , generally speaking , in a very bad state indeed . The lava clinker , over which we must drag ourselves , though smooth compared with some clinker I have heard of , such as that on the Island of Ascension , for instance , was yet rough enough to make our feet very sore , and this , together with our other miseries , had pretty well finished us . A few hundred yards above us were some large lumps of lava , and towards these we steered with the intention of lying down beneath their shade . We reached them , and to our surprise , so far as we had a capacity for surprise left in us , on a little plateau or ridge close by we saw that the clinker was covered with a dense green growth .