about eleven o'clock
As it is , the constables suspect me , and are now watching my house . ' Then , mounting his horse again , he rode leisurely away over the brow of the hill towards the scrub , through which his road lay . Both Walter and Ruth knew that unless the night was very clear there was no chance of even the lookout man on the pilot station seeing a small boat passing along to the southward ; but nevertheless they went up to the pilot station about ten o'clock , when they thought that Tom May and his companions would be passing Bar Harbour on their way to Little Nobby 's . They stayed on the headland for nearly an hour , talking to Tom King and the look-out man , and then came home , feeling satisfied that if the three men had succeeded in launching the boat safely , they had passed Bar Harbour about eleven o'clock and would reach Nobby 's at or before midnight . Soon after breakfast next morning , Patrick Kenna , under pretence of speaking to my mother about a strayed heifer of ours , came into the kitchen , and told Ruth that all was well ; he had been to Little Nobby 's at daylight and found that everything was gone and the boat was nowhere to be discerned . For quite another two or three weeks after this the constables pursued their search after Thomas May , much to the amusement of Ruth and Patrick Kenna , especially as the latter , with ` King Billy ' and another aboriginal , were officially employed by my father at ten shillings _ per diem _ to discover the absconder -- Billy , who seemed to be most anxious to get the reward of five pounds , leading the constables all over the country and eating more than three men 's rations daily . At last the chase was abandoned , and my father wrote officially to Sydney and said that ` Thomas May , No. 3614 , _ Breckenbridge _ , ' was supposed to have either died of starvation in the bush or have been killed by the natives .