nine o'clock
The captain carried off his compliment with a breezy laugh , and went along to the bridge . The girl had heard him only in a momentary flash of consciousness , and she replied merely with a side glance and a smile . Both eyes and ears , and every sense and every faculty , seemed occupied with the scene before her . It was a beautiful spring morning , not yet nine o'clock , but the sun stood high over Douglas Head , and the sunlight was glancing in the harbour from the little waves of the flowing tide . Oars were rattling up the pier , passengers were trooping down the gangways , and the decks fore and aft were becoming thronged . `` It 's beautiful ! '' she was saying , not so much to her companions as to herself , and the old parson was laughing at her bursts of rapture over the commonplace scene , and dropping out in reply little driblets of simple talk -- sweet , pure nothings -- the innocent babble as of a mountain stream .