midnight
Several related the circumstances that brought them thither . One had listened to a traveller 's tale of this marvellous stone in his own distant country , and had immediately been seized with such a thirst for beholding it as could only be quenched in its intensest lustre . Another , so long ago as when the famous Captain Smith visited these coasts , had seen it blazing far at sea , and had felt no rest in all the intervening years till now that he took up the search . A third , being encamped on a hunting-expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains , awoke at midnight and beheld the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a meteor , so that the shadows of the trees fell backward from it . They spoke of the innumerable attempts which had been made to reach the spot , and of the singular fatality which had hitherto withheld success from all adventurers , though it might seem so easy to follow to its source a light that overpowered the moon and almost matched the sun . It was observable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every other in anticipating better fortune than the past , yet nourished a scarcely-hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one . As if to allay their too sanguine hopes , they recurred to the Indian traditions that a spirit kept watch about the gem and bewildered those who sought it either by removing it from peak to peak of the higher hills or by calling up a mist from the enchanted lake over which it hung .