midnight
I recognized it as one of two which had stood lashed against either rail of the Lady Jermyn 's poop ; there the bars had risen at right angles to the deck ; now they lay horizontal , a gridiron six feet long-and my bed . And as each particular bar left its own stripe across my wearied body , and yet its own comfort in my quivering heart , another day broke over the face of the waters , and over me . Discipline , what there was of it originally , had been the very first thing to perish aboard our ill-starred ship ; the officers , I am afraid , were not much better than poor Ready made them out -LRB- thanks to Bendigo and Ballarat -RRB- , and little had been done in true ship-shape style all night . All hands had taken their spell at everything as the fancy seized them ; not a bell had been struck from first to last ; and I can only conjecture that the fire raged four or five hours , from the fact that it was midnight by my watch when I left it on my cabin drawers , and that the final extinction of the smouldering keel was so soon followed by the first deep hint of dawn . The rest took place with the trite rapidity of the equatorial latitudes . It had been my foolish way to pooh-pooh the old saying that there is no twilight in the tropics . I saw more truth in it as I lay lonely on this heaving waste .