midnight
She had been dreaming of the deed she was about to do , and was flushed and feverish ; but , mindful of the consequences which hung upon the success or failure of the enterprise , she rallied herself , bathed her face and hands , and ascended with as calm an air as she could assume to the poop-deck . Nothing was changed since yesterday . The sentries ' arms glittered in the pitiless sunshine , the ship rolled and creaked on the swell of the dreamy sea , and the prison-cage on the lower deck was crowded with the same cheerless figures , disposed in the attitudes of the day before . Even Mr. Maurice Frere , recovered from his midnight fatigues , was lounging on the same coil of rope , in precisely the same position . Yet the eye of an acute observer would have detected some difference beneath this outward varnish of similarity . The man at the wheel looked round the horizon more eagerly , and spit into the swirling , unwholesome-looking water with a more dejected air than before . The fishing-lines still hung dangling over the catheads , but nobody touched them .