midnight
At a given signal we opened our billets . `` Thou art the man , '' said the slip of paper trembling in my fingers . The sweets and anxieties of a leader were mine the rest of the afternoon . Directly after twilight set in Phil Adams stole down to the wharf and fixed the fuses to the guns , laying a train of powder from the principal fuse to the fence , through a chink of which I was to drop the match at midnight . At ten o'clock Rivermouth goes to bed . At eleven o'clock Rivermouth is as quiet as a country churchyard . At twelve o'clock there is nothing left with which to compare the stillness that broods over the little seaport .