6:30 A.M.
He must take with him the notes of his own experiments , the diagrams of his apparatus , and his precious zirconium ; and he must return with the great secret of atomic disintegration in his breast , ready , with the discoverer 's permission , to give it to the dry and thirsty world . And then , indeed , the earth would blossom like the rose ! A strange sight , the start of the Hooker Expedition ! Doctor Jelly 's coloured housemaid had just thrown a pail of blue-gray suds over his front steps -- it was 6:30 A.M. -- and was on the point of resignedly kneeling and swabbing up the doctor 's porch , when she saw the door of the professor 's residence open cautiously and a curious human exhibit , the like of which had ne'er before been seen on sea or land , surreptitiously emerge . It was Prof. Bennie Hooker -- disguised as a salmon fisherman ! Over a brand-new sportsman 's knickerbocker suit of screaming yellow check he had donned an English mackintosh . On his legs were gaiters , and on his head a helmetlike affair of cloth with a visor in front and another behind , with eartabs fastened at the crown with a piece of black ribbon -- in other words a `` Glengarry . ''