midnight
Besides , I saw it in his eye , that the man had been a reader of good books ; I would have staked my life on it , that he seized the right meaning of Montaigne . I saw that he was an earnest thinker ; I more than suspected that he had been bolted in the mill of adversity . For all these things , my heart yearned toward him ; I determined to know him . At last I succeeded ; it was during a profoundly quiet midnight watch , when I perceived him walking alone in the waist , while most of the men were dozing on the carronade-slides . That night we scoured all the prairies of reading ; dived into the bosoms of authors , and tore out their hearts ; and that night White-Jacket learned more than he has ever done in any single night since . The man was a marvel . He amazed me , as much as Coleridge did the troopers among whom he enlisted .