eight o'clock in the morning
Apparently it has exploded , for it has thrown a great column of water for miles up into the air . We are stopping and standing by , although the heat is intense and clouds of steam are rising from the sea . '' As the minutes passed by after the report from the rocket-ship had been received , the disappearance from the sky of the flaming craft from space seemed to confirm the belief that it had been swallowed by the ocean . This was accepted as a certainty by eight o'clock in the morning . `` Ah , '' sighed Steinholt , `` if only it had crashed on land somewhere . If there only was enough of it left for us to -- '' `` Enough of any damn contraption of that kind , '' swore Lazarre fervently , `` is altogether too much . I hope , for one , that its fragments are scattered so far that we never can put them together again . ''