Ten o’clock
And the dinner of the Mirliflores would be eaten , excellent as to cooking , and leaving upon the traveller 's mind an impression that there were in Sulaco many pleasant , able young men with salaries apparently too large for their discretion , and amongst them a few , mostly Anglo-Saxon , skilled in the art of , as the saying is , `` taking a rise '' out of his kind host . With a rapid , jingling drive to the harbour in a two-wheeled machine -LRB- which Captain Mitchell called a curricle -RRB- behind a fleet and scraggy mule beaten all the time by an obviously Neapolitan driver , the cycle would be nearly closed before the lighted-up offices of the O. S. N. Company , remaining open so late because of the steamer . Nearly -- but not quite . `` Ten o'clock . Your ship wo n't be ready to leave till half-past twelve , if by then . Come in for a brandy-and-soda and one more cigar . '' And in the superintendent 's private room the privileged passenger by the Ceres , or Juno , or Pallas , stunned and as it were annihilated mentally by a sudden surfeit of sights , sounds , names , facts , and complicated information imperfectly apprehended , would listen like a tired child to a fairy tale ; would hear a voice , familiar and surprising in its pompousness , tell him , as if from another world , how there was `` in this very harbour '' an international naval demonstration , which put an end to the Costaguana-Sulaco War .