one o'clock
` I 've got to ask you to strike out my second officer . ' He seemed excited and bothered . He explained that his second mate had been working on board all the morning . At one o'clock he went out to get a bit of dinner and did n't turn up at two as he ought to have done . Instead there came a messenger from the hospital with a note signed by a doctor . Collar-bone and one arm broken . Let himself be knocked down by a pair-horse van while crossing the road outside the dock gate , as if he had neither eyes nor ears .