three o'clock
Toward the end of my watch the breeze evinced a slight tendency to freshen , and when at nine o'clock I handed over the charge of the boat to the boatswain , and Cunningham and I disposed ourselves to secure such sleep as might come to us , we were slipping along through the water at the rate of a good honest four knots in the hour . As may be imagined , my sleep that night was of a somewhat intermittent character , for a boat 's thwart is not the most comfortable bed in the world , and I was fully conscious of the responsibility that had been laid upon me to guide the gig , and the lives which had been entrusted to her , over the trackless ocean , without the aid of chart or nautical instruments of any kind save the toy compass attached to Cunningham 's watch chain . I was well aware that my only hope of success lay in the keeping of the most accurate account possible of the boat 's progress and direction , and , therefore , was up and looking about me at least half a dozen times during the night . The fine weather continued all through the hours of darkness , and during the boatswain 's and carpenter 's watches the wind gradually freshened up , until by three o'clock , when Chips called the sailmaker to relieve him , the boat was buzzing merrily along at a speed of between six and seven knots ; but after that the wind began to soften rapidly away again , until at length , when the sun swept into view above the eastern horizon , we scarcely had steerage way , and half an hour later it fell a flat calm . We accordingly lowered the sail , and , this done , I directed Simpson , the sailmaker -- who was the lightest of us , and therefore the least likely to capsize the boat -- to shin up to the masthead and see if he could detect any sign of the longboat or the barque , and incidentally take a good look round the entire horizon upon the off-chance of there being a sail anywhere in sight ; but he reported the horizon bare in every direction except in the eastern board , where he fancied he could occasionally detect a faint something that might possibly be the sails of the longboat , although he was by no means sure even as to that , opining that what he had seen , if indeed he had seen anything at all , might be the distant fin of a prowling shark . The mention of sharks gave me an idea , and I asked my companions whether perchance any of them happened to have any small stuff about them out of which we might contrive to make a fishing line ; whereupon Chips , with a smile , requested me to vacate my seat in the sternsheets for a moment , and , opening the locker in the after thwart of the boat , produced an excellent cod line , with hooks and sinker all complete , explaining that as soon as he gathered an inkling of what Bainbridge intended on the previous day , he contrived , while engaged in knocking up a temporary pen for the sheep , to filch the said line out of the cook 's galley and to secrete it , afterward seizing an opportunity to transfer it to the gig 's locker when he learned that she was about to be turned over to us . There happened to be a piece of dry shrivelled bait still transfixed upon one of the hooks ; we therefore dropped it over the side , paid out the line , made fast the inner end to one of the thwarts , and forthwith forgot all about it in the small bustle of getting breakfast .