midnight
How different is the scene that I have now to tell from that which has just been told ! Gone are the quiet college rooms , gone the wind-swayed English elms , the cawing rooks , and the familiar volumes on the shelves , and in their place there rises a vision of the great calm ocean gleaming in shaded silver lights beneath the beams of the full African moon . A gentle breeze fills the huge sail of our dhow , and draws us through the water that ripples musically against her sides . Most of the men are sleeping forward , for it is near midnight , but a stout swarthy Arab , Mahomed by name , stands at the tiller , lazily steering by the stars . Three miles or more to our starboard is a low dim line . It is the Eastern shore of Central Africa . We are running to the southward , before the North East Monsoon , between the mainland and the reef that for hundreds of miles fringes this perilous coast .