midnight
Wyllard was a little weary , and more depressed , but it was not until he sat in the stern cabin with its cheerful twinkling stove and swinging lamp that he understood how he had shrunk from that forbidding wilderness . His consultation with Dampier , who came in by and bye , was very brief . `` We 'll head north for a couple of days , and try again , '' he said . He crawled into his berth early , and it was some time after midnight when he was awakened by being rudely flung out of it . That fact , and the slant of deck and sounds above , suggested that the schooner had been hove down by a sudden gale . He had , however , grown more or less accustomed to occurrences of this kind and to sleeping fully dressed , and in another moment or two he was out of the deck-house . Then a wind that seemed sharp as steel drove stinging flakes of snow into his face .