nine o'clock
It 's an adventure merely to hear the thing . Take a winter night in the dull season after Christmas , for instance . You have begun to go to sleep right after supper . You 've finished the job at nine o'clock , and by two A.M. you 're sailing placidly southwest of Australia in a seagoing automobile . Suddenly the pirate-ship in the rear , which you had n't noticed before , slips up and begins potting away at you with a dull metallic boom . The auto slips its clutch , and the engine begins to clang and clatter , and somebody off behind a red-hot mountain in the distance begins ringing an enormous bell just as you slide downward into a crater of flame -- and then you wake up entirely , and the fire-bell is going `` clang-clang-clang-clang-clang , '' while below you hear the ringing crunch of your neighbor 's feet on the cold snow , and outside the north window there is a red glare which may be either the end of the world or another exploded lamp in ` Bige Brinton 's chicken-incubator ; you wo n't know which until you have stabbed both feet into one pants-leg , crawled all over the cold floor for a missing sock , and run half a mile , double-reefing your nightshirt to keep it from trailing out from under your overcoat . That 's what a fire-alarm means in Homeburg .