midnight
We were even more fortunate on this occasion than we had been before , though we found that it was no longer possible to take our enemies by surprise as we had done at first ; they had learned wisdom from experience and had become aware of our tactics , notwithstanding which we took four privateers , one of which we cut out from under a battery , and made several recaptures , two of which proved to be very valuable . But as these incidents happened to be mere interludes , as it were , in my story , having no special significance , I shall leave them without further mention and pass on . The reader will therefore please understand that I had been in command of the _ Dolphin _ rather more than six months when the incident occurred to which I am about to refer . The time was about half an hour , or thereabouts , after midnight , and our position was about sixty miles south-east of Beata Point , the southernmost point on the mainland of Saint Domingo . The day had been fine , with a very nice pleasant working breeze , but as the sun had declined toward the horizon the wind had shown signs of dropping , gradually dying away after sunset , until toward the end of the first watch it had fallen so completely calm that we had furled all our canvas to save wear and tear , and were , at the time mentioned , lying under bare poles , slowly drifting with the current to the westward . The night was pitch-dark , for there was no moon , and with the dying away of the wind a great bank of heavy thunderous-looking cloud had gradually worked up from the westward , imperceptibly expanding until it had at length obscured the entire firmament , promising a thunder-storm which would doubtless be all the heavier when it broke from the length of time which it took in the brewing . I had remained on deck until midnight ; but observing , when the middle watch was called , that the barometer had dropped only the merest trifle , had gone below upon the deck being relieved , and , leaving orders with young Boyne to call me in the event of any change in the weather , had flung myself , half undressed , into my cot , hoping to get a nap before the storm broke , and feeling pretty confident that when it did nothing very serious could happen , the schooner being under bare poles .