midday
They ran slowly , for there was no hurry , and the Ark had now become to its inhabitants as a house and a home -- their only foothold on the whole round earth , and that but a little floating island of buoyant metal . They crossed the Pamirs and the Hindu-Kush , the place where the Caspian Sea had been swallowed up in the universal ocean , and ran over Ararat , which three months before had put them into such fearful danger , but whose loftiest summit now lay twelve thousand feet beneath their keel . At length , after many excursions toward the north and toward the south , in the halcyon weather that had seldom failed since the withdrawal of the nebula , they arrived at the place -LRB- or above it -RRB- which had stood during centuries for a noon-mark on the globe . It was midday when Captain Arms , having made his observations , said to Cosmo and the others on the bridge : `` Noon at Greenwich , and noon on the Ark. . Latitude , fifty-one degrees thirty minutes . That brings you as nearly plumb over the place as you 'd be likely to hit it . Right down there lies the old observatory that set the chronometers of the world , and kept the clocks and watches up to their work . ''