nine o'clock
After that , government was content to offer large rewards for the apprehension of the escaped convicts , but the police did not care to venture a second time into their dread abode . I have mentioned these circumstances to show that the undertaking upon which we had embarked was one of no ordinary kind ; that there was much peril and little honor to be gained in an encounter with half a dozen desperate men , who knew that their lives depended upon the stout resistance which they should offer , and of course would fight to the death . If we did look sharply to the loading of our rifles , and felt the long bowie knives that we carried at our waist to find whether the blades worked easily in their sheaths , it was because we expected to use them , and knew that our only hope to return alive was by a prompt employment of the deadly weapons when an encounter took place . It was near nine o'clock when we halted upon the outskirts of the dark forest . Hardly a ray of the hot sun penetrated the woods ; all was gloomy and silent . Occasionally a parrot upon the borders of the forest uttered a shrill scream , and then spreading its gaudy wings sought shelter upon the bough of a tall tree , from whence it could watch our movements without danger . The hound , which we had taken with us , ran with his nose close to the ground , sometimes moving within a few feet of the trees , and then starting off , scouring the prairie in his search , but always returning , until he suddenly stopped before what seemed a dense thicket .