nine o'clock
And the moon shone clear in the southern heaven that morning , like a great old dying queen whose Court swarms distantly from around her , diffident , pale , and tremulous , the paler the nearer ; and I could see the mountain-shadows on her spotty full-face , and her misty aureole , and her lights on the sea , as it were kisses stolen in the kingdom of sleep ; and all among the quiet ships mysterious white trails and powderings of light , like palace-corridors in some fairy-land forlorn , full of breathless wan whispers , scandals , and runnings-to-and-fro , with leers , and agitated last embraces , and flight of the princess , and death-bed of the king ; and on the N.E. horizon a bank of brown cloud that seemed to have no relation with the world ; and yonder , not far , the white coast-cliffs , not so low as at Calais near , but arranged in masses separated by vales of sward , each with its wreck : but no light of any revolving-drum I saw . * * * * * I could not sleep that night : for all the operations of my mind and body seemed in abeyance . Mechanically I turned the ship westward again ; and when the sun came up , there , hardly two miles from me , were the cliffs of Dover ; and on the crenulated summit of the Castle I spied the Union Jack hang motionless . I heard eight , nine o'clock strike in the cabin , and I was still at sea . But some mad , audacious whisper was at my brain : and at 10.30 , the 2nd September , immediately opposite the Cross Wall Custom House , the _ Boreal 's _ anchor-chain , after a voyage of three years , two months , and fourteen days , ran thundering , thundering , through the starboard hawse-hole . Ah heaven ! but I must have been stark mad to let the anchor go !