noon
what must I do to be saved ? '' `` Ah ! '' thought Attwater , `` here is the true penitent . '' On a very bright , hot , lusty , strongly-blowing noon , a fortnight after the events recorded , and a month since the curtain rose upon this episode , a man might have been spied praying on the sand by the lagoon beach . A point of palm-trees isolated him from the settlement ; and from the place where he knelt , the only work of man 's hand that interrupted the expanse was the schooner _ Farallone _ , her berth quite changed , and rocking at anchor some two miles to windward in the midst of the lagoon . The noise of the Trade ran very boisterous in all parts of the island ; the nearer palm-trees crashed and whistled in the gusts , those farther off contributed a humming bass like the roar of cities ; and yet , to any man less absorbed , there must have risen at times over this turmoil of the winds the sharper note of the human voice from the settlement . There all was activity .