noon
`` There , sir , do n't you hear it ? '' he asked suddenly . I heard nothing but the creaking of the manilla sheet . It was getting near noon , and fine , clear weather in southern waters , -- just the sort of day and the time when you would least expect to feel creepy . But I remembered how I had heard that same tune overhead at night in a gale of wind a fortnight earlier , and I am not ashamed to say that the same sensation came over me now , and I wished myself well out of the _ Helen B. _ , and aboard of any old cargo-dragger , with a windmill on deck , and an eighty-nine-forty-eighter for captain , and a fresh leak whenever it breezed up . Little by little during the next few days life on board that vessel came to be about as unbearable as you can imagine . It was n't that there was much talk , for I think the men were shy even of speaking to each other freely about what they thought .