noon
`` Lie yourself , yaller nigger , '' said the darky . `` You no tink dat four officers and de passenger gen ` leman all eat muchee food ; very good appeta-tites havee . '' The serang walked away from Snowball with a strong expression of doubt in his face , and ever afterwards seemed to bear a particular ill-will to the darky , laying traps to trip him up on his passage to and fro between the galley and the cabin when heavily laden with dishes for Mr Meredith 's gigantic meals . The ship sailed on serenely , making from two hundred to two hundred and fifty knots in each twenty-four hours run -- on some exceptional occasions clearing indeed as much as three hundred , to the great jubilation of the men -- until one day , at noon , Captain Morton announced that they were in the same parallel as the Thousand Islands , and rapidly approaching the Straits of Sunda . This wide channel of the sea , separating the islands of Java and Sumatra , forms one of the main gateways used by the vast number of ships that navigate the China Sea . All vessels bound thither from the western hemisphere pass either to the north or south of Sumatra , entering the Eastern Archipelago through the Straits of Singapore or else by the Straits of Sunda . Steam-vessels bound through the Suez Canal and Indian Ocean use the former route , and those rounding the Cape of Good Hope the latter .