about nine in the evening
Instead , I equipped myself with a stone club , some three feet in length and of suitable diameter , which occupied an even month in the fashioning . Also , to secure the oar from the weather -LRB- for I used it in mild breezes as a flagstaff on top of my pyramid from which to fly a flag I made me from one of my precious shirts -RRB- I contrived for it a covering of well-cured sealskins . In the month of March of the sixth year of my confinement I experienced one of the most tremendous storms that was perhaps ever witnessed by man . It commenced at about nine in the evening , with the approach of black clouds and a freshening wind from the south-west , which , by eleven , had become a hurricane , attended with incessant peals of thunder and the sharpest lightning I had ever witnessed . I was not without apprehension for the safety of the island . Over every part the seas made a clean breach , except of the summit of my pyramid . There the life was nigh beaten and suffocated out of my body by the drive of the wind and spray .