midnight
They were mostly jack or tench , and by the evening they had caught nearly a hundred . When they rowed to shore they found that they had been far more successful than any of the Ostjaks , this being due to the superiority of their hooks over the fish-bone contrivances of the natives . Following the example of the Ostjaks they laid the fish in lines in front of their tent to freeze during the night . After boiling their kettle , frying a couple of fish , and taking supper , they lighted two torches and again went out , returning before midnight with twenty-five salmon averaging fifteen pounds each . By the morning the fish were all frozen as hard as pieces of wood , and were then laid in a pile . For four days this work continued with equal success , and by the end of that time they had a pile of fish six feet square and three feet high , making , Godfrey calculated , nearly a ton of fish . They had observed that some of the Ostjaks had each morning brought in several wild geese and swans , and Luka learnt from them that there was a large marsh a mile away in which large flights of geese settled every night .