midnight
`` Four days we journeyed over the foot-hills and mountains , fording icy torrents , winding around the crumbling brows of ragged peaks , creeping along the rocky flanges that overlooked awful precipices , crawling breathlessly over tottering bridges that crossed bottomless chasms . `` On the evening of the seventeenth we camped by a little stream on the bare hills five miles from Aguas Frias . At daybreak we were to take up the march again . `` At midnight I was standing outside my tent inhaling the fresh cold air . The stars were shining bright in the cloudless sky , giving the heavens their proper aspect of illimitable depth and distance when viewed from the vague darkness of the blotted earth . Almost at its zenith was the planet Saturn ; and with a half-smile I observed the sinister red sparkle of his malignant attendant -- the demon star of Kearny 's ill luck . And then my thoughts strayed across the hills to the scene of our coming triumph where the heroic and noble Don Rafael awaited our coming to set a new and shining star in the firmament of nations .