three minutes past three
It was three minutes past three postmeridian in the operating room of the new Wireless Station recently installed at the United States Naval Observatory at Georgetown . Bill Hood , the afternoon operator , was sitting in his shirt sleeves with his receivers at his ears , smoking a corncob pipe and awaiting a call from the flagship _ Lincoln _ of the North Atlantic Patrol with which , somewhere just off Hatteras , he had been in communication a few moments before . The air was quiet . Hood was a fat man , and so of course good-natured ; but he was serious about his work and hated all interfering amateurs .