midnight
Here he met with an ample reward for his trouble in climbing the tree , for he saw that , if they pursued their way due south -- as they could now do , directing their course by the moon -- they would have to travel through at least seven miles of forest ; whilst by heading in a south-westerly direction , keeping the moon a little on their left hand , they would only have to traverse some two miles of forest , after which there seemed to be tolerably open ground as far as the eye could reach . About three miles East-South-East of him he detected the gleaming white walls of a number of buildings , which he judged to be a portion of the town of Santiago ; beyond it rose a curiously-shaped , double-coned mountain ; away on his right lay the table-land of Mariel ; and -- joyous sight -- through a break in the rising ground to the southward he caught a glimpse of the sea , with , far away on the utmost verge of the horizon , an appearance of land , which he conjectured must be the Isle of Pines . Noting all these matters carefully , and making a rough mental sketch of `` the lay of the land , '' George rapidly descended to where he had left Tom and Walford , and rapidly detailed to the former the result of his observations . `` We must be off at once , '' he explained , `` for we have no time to spare ; we have lost nearly three good hours blundering about here blindly in this wood ; it must be now nearly or quite midnight ; and , if so , it leaves us only ten hours at most to reach the sea , if we are to do so without being overtaken . '' Accordingly , weary and stiff as they were , they again shouldered the pole from which Walford in his hammock was slung , and once more set out upon their journey , which , now that they were favoured by the light of the moon , they hoped would be of a somewhat more prosperous character than it had hitherto been . Another painful and toilsome tramp of a couple of hours and they emerged , to their unbounded joy , from the southern side of the forest on to comparatively open ground . Trees and dense straggling clumps of bush were still abundant enough -- far too much so , in fact -- but there were wide patches of grass-land between , over which their progress was tolerably rapid .