Three o’clock
` Indeed , ' I said , ` then I wish that you would do it a little more quietly . ' Alphonse retreated , and I heard no more of his groans . And so the time passed , till at length Mr Mackenzie called me in a whisper through the window , for of course everything had now to be done in the most absolute silence . ` Three o'clock , ' he said : ` we must begin to move at half-past . ' I told him to come in , and presently he entered , and I am bound to say that if it had not been that just then I had not got a laugh anywhere about me , I should have exploded at the sight he presented armed for battle . To begin with , he had on a clergyman 's black swallow-tail and a kind of broad-rimmed black felt hat , both of which he had donned on account , he said , of their dark colour . In his hand was the Winchester repeating rifle we had lent him ; and stuck in an elastic cricketing belt , like those worn by English boys , were , first , a huge buckhorn-handled carving knife with a guard to it , and next a long-barrelled Colt 's revolver .