midnight
He quite forgot that Mick did not know who Eagle was , and merely thought him to be a more than ordinarily useless black-fellow . Sax had found out to his cost what an exceedingly unpleasant task it is to keep brands hot on a blazing north-wind summer 's day in the Australian desert . The tired lad 's indignant thoughts became confused as sleep gradually claimed him , and at last his aching body was at rest , though his mind still kept active and started to build dreams . Just after midnight , when everything was still , and the last of the cattle had ceased to splash in the water-hole and had gone out on one or another of the long cattle-pads which stretched away into the silent desert , when the half-moon looked down on the motionless and soundless world , a dark face peeped over the top of the sandhill above the sleeping stockmen . The man 's naked body lay flat as a snake on the sand and wriggled forward with movements like the waving of a shadow on a wall , till the native could gain a clear view of the place where his unconscious enemy lay . It was Eagle . He had come to kill .