midnight
Out in the North Sea , wallowing sullenly in the trough of the waves , her masts gone by the board and her deck awash , lay the derelict schooner `` Valkyrie '' of Bergen . She would have been at the bottom of the sea had it not been for her cargo of Norway pine , keeping her painfully afloat against her will . Fate , with its little finger , moved this uncharted peril right in the track of the `` Starlight , '' beating close-reefed through the buffeting waves on the night of May 1st , while Larssen , in his London home , satisfied that his plans had foreseen every human eventuality , slept the easy sleep of the successful . The `` Starlight '' struck the sodden derelict shortly before midnight , with a crash that jarred the yacht to her innermost fibres . She struck it full abeam , like a motor-car smashing in the dark into an unlighted farm-waggon drawn across a country lane . Bows crumpled up ; bowsprit snapped away ; foremast , loosed from its stay , and forced back by the pressure of a half-gale on the close-hauled foresail , carried over to port in a tangle of rope and wire and canvas . Thrown back on her haunches , the `` Starlight '' gasped and shivered and began to settle by the head from the rush of water into the forecastle .