three o'clock in the afternoon
Thought likely we might want to splice our towline . ` Bout ten fathom , I reckon ; 'n' there 's the lariat , two fathom more . All we 've got to de is to pack up , stick our backs under , 'n' travel . '' It was three o'clock in the afternoon when they commenced their preparations for making this extraordinary portage . Sunk as they were twenty-five hundred feet in the bowels of the earth , the sun had already set for them ; but they were still favored with a sort of twilight radiance , and they could count upon it for a couple of hours longer . Carefully the guns , paddles , and stores were landed on the marvellous causeway ; and then , with still greater caution , the boat was lifted to the same support and taken to pieces . The whole mass of material , some two hundred pounds in weight , was divided into three portions .