three o'clock in the afternoon
With your leave , I 'll take another drop of the sherry wine . `` Well -LRB- it 's fine old wine , that ; look at the oily drops running down the glass -RRB- -- well , steering to the north-west , you will understand , was out of the captain 's course . Nevertheless , finding no solution of the mystery on board the ship , and the weather at the time being fine , the captain determined , while the daylight lasted , to alter his course , and see what came of it . Toward three o'clock in the afternoon an iceberg came of it ; with a wrecked ship stove in , and frozen fast to the ice ; and the passengers and crew nigh to death with cold and exhaustion . Wonderful enough , you will say ; but more remains behind . As the mate was helping one of the rescued passengers up the side of the bark , who should he turn out to be but the very man whose ghostly appearance Bruce had seen in the captain 's cabin writing on the captain 's slate ! And more than that -- if your capacity for being surprised is n't clean worn out by this time -- the passenger recognized the bark as the very vessel which he had seen in a dream at noon that day .