eleven o'clock at night
And in this , his second trip ashore , he was beginning to snatch his first puzzling glimpses of the Oriental mind . He laughed when the bowing and kotowing was over , and turned on his heel to confront another problem . How was he to get aboard ship ? It was eleven o'clock at night , and there would be no ship 's boats ashore , while the outlook for hiring a native boatman , with nothing but empty pockets to draw upon , was not particularly inviting . Keeping a sharp lookout for shipmates , he went down to the pier . At Yokohama there are no long lines of wharves . The shipping lies out at anchor , enabling a few hundred of the short-legged people to make a livelihood by carrying passengers to and from the shore .