about noon
* * * * * That day as he trod the shore , bent under the tracking-line , Stonor had plenty to occupy his mind . Over and over he made his calculations of time and distance : `` This is the twenty-seventh . It was the fifteenth when I sent Tole Grampierre back to Enterprise . If he rode hard he 'd get there about noon on the seventeenth . The steamboat is n't due to start up-stream until the twentieth , but Gaviller would surely let her go at once when he got my message . She 'd only need to get wood aboard and steam up . She could steam night and day too , at this stage of water ; she 's done it before -- that is , if they had anybody to relieve Mathews at the engine .