three o'clock in the morning
The captains of vessels , coming on shore later in the day , brought tales of a strange invasion , and wanted to know who were the two offensive lunatics in a steam-launch , apparently after a man and a girl , and telling a story of which one could make neither head nor tail . Their reception by the roadstead was generally unsympathetic , even to the point of the mate of an American ship bundling them out over the rail with unseemly precipitation . Meantime Heyst and the girl were a good few miles away , having gone in the night on board one of the Tesman schooners bound to the eastward . This was known afterwards from the Javanese boatmen whom Heyst hired for the purpose at three o'clock in the morning . The Tesman schooner had sailed at daylight with the usual land breeze , and was probably still in sight in the offing at the time . However , the two pursuers after their experience with the American mate , made for the shore . On landing , they had another violent row in the German language .