about noon
This little slice of good fortune , coming as it did at the very outset of our cruise , was peculiarly gratifying to me , not so much on account of either the honour or the profit likely to accrue to me personally from the transaction , but because it put the crew into good spirits , and infused into them , especially the strangers among them , an amount of confidence in me which my extremely youthful appearance would perhaps have otherwise failed to command . We devoted an entire week to our projected examination of the Saint Domingo coast , making four more captures during that time ; but they all proved to be of so little value that they were set on fire and destroyed . Then , having worked our way as far east as Saona , we stretched across the Mona Passage ; looked into the various bays and creeks on the south coast of Porto Rico without success , and finally found ourselves , on our sixteenth day out , with the island of Virgin Gorda and the Herman reefs under our lee as we stood to the northward and eastward to weather the Virgin group . It was about noon when -- having stretched off the land some twenty miles or so , we were about to bear up and take a look at the northern shores of those islands whose southern coastline we had just so rigorously overhauled -- the lookout aloft hailed to say that he thought he heard firing somewhere to windward . I was walking the deck at the time chatting with young Marchmont , one of the two mids sent on board by the admiral , and , upon this report being made , the lad volunteered to go aloft and investigate . A couple of minutes later the active youngster was on the royal-yard , peering out eagerly ahead and to windward , with one hand shading his eyes to ward off the glare of the sun . He remained thus for perhaps three or four minutes , when I saw him assume a more eager look , and presently he turned round and hailed : `` On deck there !