midnight
He told her . He awaited some expression of surprise on her part , provided it were , indeed , true that only twenty-five minutes had sped since the _ Andromeda _ was quietly preparing to drop anchor off South Point . But she received his news without comment . She would have been equally undisturbed if told it was midnight , and that the vessel had gone ashore on the coast of China . Just then the track turned sharply away from the sea . A dry water-course cut deeply into the cliff where torrential rains had found an upright layer of soft scoria imbedded in the mass of basalt . Their guide was standing on the sky-line of the cleft , some forty feet above them .