and twelve
o'clock in the morning
These three together made Garland Town , the capital of the Islands ; and the population of St. Lide 's -- town , garrison , and country side -- numbered a little over fourteen hundred . Garrison Hill , rising -LRB- as we have seen -RRB- with a pretty steep acclivity , attains the height of a hundred and ten feet above sea level . It measures about three-quarters of a mile in length and a quarter of a mile in breadth , and the lines of fortification extended around the whole hill -LRB- except upon the north-west side , which happened to be the most important -RRB- ; a circuit of one mile and a quarter . -LSB- Illustration -RSB- You entered them beneath a massive but ruinous gateway , surmounted by a bell , which Sergeant Treacher rang regularly at six , nine , and twelve o'clock in the morning , and at three , six , and nine p.m. , and struck to announce the intervening hours : for the Islands had no public clock . To the left of this gateway the Commandant always began his round , starting from King George 's Battery , to which in old days the Islanders had looked for warning of the enemy 's approach . Then it had mounted seven long eighteen-pounders : now -- The Commandant sighed and moved on ; past the Duke 's Battery -LRB- four eighteen-pounders -RRB- , the Vixen -LRB- one eighteen and one nine-pounder -RRB- , and along by a breastwork pierced with embrasures to the important battery on Day Point , at the extreme south-east . Here five thirty-two pounders -- and , three hundred yards away to the west , in the great Windlass Battery , no fewer than eleven guns of the same calibre -- had grinned defiance at the ships of France .