four o’clock
He had furnished the twenty-pound note which made that natty damsel doubly anxious to meet her faithful lover `` Joseph Smith , '' to whom she now dispatched the news of the immediate return of the anxious Professor . Fraser was burning to take up the gathering of Thibetan pearls of hidden knowledge , while the artful and restless Professor Alaric Hobbs was stealthily waiting Prince Djiddin 's departure , but kept busied with some personal tidal and magnetic observations on Rozel Head . In the deserted second floor of an old martello tower , he had made a lair for his evening star and planetory researches , and the ingenious Yankee concealed a rope ladder in the clinging ivy which enabled him to cut off all intrusion on his eyrie . It was four o'clock of a wild November afternoon when Major Alan Hawke , cowering in a hooded Irish frieze ulster , crawled deeper into a cave-like recess in the little path leading from the Jersey Arms up to Rozel Head . The blinding rain was thrown in wild gusts by the howling winds , now lashing the green channel to a roughened foam . A sudden and terrific storm was coming on . Half an hour before the disguised adventurer could see the ominous double storm signals flying in warning on the scattered coast guard stations , a signal of danger sent on from the Corbieres Lighthouse .