nine o'clock
From the first the voyage was going wrong . Routed out of my hotel on a bitter March morning , I had crossed Baltimore and reached the pier-end precisely on time . At nine o'clock the tug was to have taken me down the bay and put me on board the _ Elsinore _ , and with growing irritation I sat frozen inside my taxicab and waited . On the seat , outside , the driver and Wada sat hunched in a temperature perhaps half a degree colder than mine . And there was no tug . Possum , the fox-terrier puppy Galbraith had so inconsiderately foisted upon me , whimpered and shivered on my lap inside my greatcoat and under the fur robe .