about four o'clock in the afternoon
he screamed . `` Mind your own business and do n't interfere with mine ! '' I choked down my wrath as Leith came crashing through from the rear , and the old egoist , flushed and ruffled , dropped back to meet him , evidently convinced of my insanity through my inability to appreciate his efforts to prove that the skulls of long-dead Polynesians possessed peculiar formations they were foreign to the islanders of the present day . It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when we began to draw near the Vermilion Pit which Leith had mentioned when he had urged haste at the midday luncheon . The surroundings became more strange and mysterious with each step we took . The basalt peaks that we had noticed from the deck of _ The Waif _ were now quite close to us , and they seemed to move in upon us from both sides . The trees and lianas became less numerous , and the black rocks came toward us in a sinister manner that conjured up thoughts of a dead something toward which the encircling ridges were guiding us like the arms of a corral .