five o'clock
All through the afternoon Terry had been dimly conscious that the headache had returned , that his face was flushed and hot , but the fast pumping blood seemed to energize his faculties . Never had he felt so keyed-up , so sinewy of nerve . The hours flew with the miles . At five o'clock he crashed out of the woods into an open spot where the trail bent down toward the river to skirt a deep black pool -- the Bogobos ' Crocodile Hole , which none of them would ever approach . It was a roughly circular depression extending from bank to bank , a hundred feet in diameter ; it lay just below the ledge of rock that made a low-water ford but which , at high water , was the brink of a falls which had worn a deep hole in the soft river bottom . Terry slowed his steaming pony as he rounded the pool . Stories that he had overheard flashed across his mind , ghastly stories whispered by tremulous native lips into credulous brown ears , of the size of the Thing which dwelt here , of its age , its incredible scaly length and girth , its patient devilish cunning ; of the toll it had taken of three generations , tales you would not care to hear -- like that of the old blind Bogobo who lost his way , and groping for the trail with naked hands -- no , you would not care to hear such appalling tales .