midnight
You desecrate the hour of meditation with rhapsodies on nature when your aesthetics ai n't honed up to the beauties of good tobacco . '' The other laughed , inflating his deep chest . In the gloom he stretched his muscles restlessly , as though an excess of vigor filled him . They were lounging upon the dock , while before them lay the Santa Maria ready for her midnight sailing . Behind slept Unalaska , quaint , antique , and Russian , rusting amid the fogs of Bering Sea . Where , a week before , mild-eyed natives had dried their cod among the old bronze cannon , now a frenzied horde of gold-seekers paused in their rush to the new El Dorado . They had come like a locust cloud , thousands strong , settling on the edge of the Smoky Sea , waiting the going of the ice that barred them from their Golden Fleece -- from Nome the new , where men found fortune in a night .