eight o'clock in the morning
Our revel is over ; behind us the harbour lies almost deserted , and we row back to our diurnal peace . To be sure , in the days of which I write , there were no yachts to visit us . But three of His Majesty 's training-brigs had arrived , bringing their gigs and long-boats , and sailing cutters , with the racing-shells in which the oarsmen of Dock were to do battle with our champions of Troy , and a couple of crews of the famous Saltash fishwomen who annually gave us an exhibition race for a purse of gold and in the evening danced quadrilles and country reels on the quarter-deck with His Majesty 's officers . The town , on its part , had made all due and zealous preparations ; and at eight o'clock in the morning , when the Major stepped out of the hospital for a look at the weather -LRB- which was hazy but warm , with promise of a cloudless noon -RRB- , already the streets breathed festival . Sir Felix 's coppices had been thinned as usual for the occasion , and scores of small saplings , larch and beech and hazel , lined the narrow streets , their sharpened stems planted between the cobbles , their leafy tops braced back against the house-fronts and stayed with ropes which , leading through the upper windows , were made fast within to bars of grates , table-legs and bed-posts . Over them , from house to house , strings of flags waved in the light morning breeze , and over these again the air was jocund with the distant tunding of a drum and the voices of flute and clarionet calling men to mirth in the Town Square . The Major gave a glance up and down the street and retired indoors to prepare his breakfast , for he was alone .