about six o'clock in the evening
At the end of the week he appeared without warning in the office of the paper where I worked , and , greeting me without making any allusion to what had happened , invited me to come for two days ' sailing in a small boat which had been lent him by a friend . `` I was startled enough by this incongruous suggestion , but naturally I accepted : you could n't refuse such an invitation from a man who , you suspected , intended to have such a matter out with you on the open sea . We started immediately , and all the way down in the train for Cornwall he talked in his usual manner , undeterred by the fact that I never answered him . We got out at Penzance , the time then being , I suppose , about six o'clock in the evening . I had never been to Penzance before , but he seemed to know his way about , walking me briskly down to the harbour , where a fishing-smack under the charge of a rough-looking sailor was waiting for him . By now I was quite certain that he meant to have it out with me , and for my part , after the long uncertainty of the week , I asked nothing better than to get to grips with him . All I prayed for was a hand-to-hand struggle in which I might have the luck to tip him overboard , so I was rather dismayed when I saw that the sailor was to accompany us .