noon
what must I do to be saved ? ' ` Ah ! ' thought Attwater , ` here 's the true penitent . ' On a very bright , hot , lusty , strongly blowing noon , a fortnight after the events recorded , and a month since the curtain rose upon this episode , a man might have been spied , praying on the sand by the lagoon beach . A point of palm trees isolated him from the settlement ; and from the place where he knelt , the only work of man 's hand that interrupted the expanse , was the schooner Farallone , her berth quite changed , and rocking at anchor some two miles to windward in the midst of the lagoon . The noise of the Trade ran very boisterous in all parts of the island ; the nearer palm trees crashed and whistled in the gusts , those farther off contributed a humming bass like the roar of cities ; and yet , to any man less absorbed , there must have risen at times over this turmoil of the winds , the sharper note of the human voice from the settlement . There all was activity .