five o'clock
The German manager of the great plantation proved to be , as the old trader had said , `` one of the white-men kind of Dutchmen . '' He received the young supercargo most hospitably , and insisted upon his remaining to lunch , and when Flemming told him frankly of the long quest for the four missing men , he at once became deeply sympathetic . `` You shall see every one of the six or seven hundred natives I have working for me , Mr. Flemming . They are all now scattered about in different portions of the plantation , but at five o'clock , when they knock off , I shall have them all mustered . But I am almost certain that you will not find any one of the nine who were transferred from the Peruvian slaver to the German ` black-birder , ' for I have always taken an interest in these people , and know pretty well from where they all come . My predecessor here was very rough with them -- the less I say about him the better -- and there is now quite a number of runaways living in the bush . They have defied all efforts to capture them .