midnight
We used to watch the stars that fell , too , and see them streak down . Jim allowed they 'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest . Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark , and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys , and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty ; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again ; and by and by her waves would get to us , a long time after she was gone , and joggle the raft a bit , and after that you would n't hear nothing for you could n't tell how long , except maybe frogs or something . After midnight the people on shore went to bed , and then for two or three hours the shores was black -- no more sparks in the cabin windows . These sparks was our clock -- the first one that showed again meant morning was coming , so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right away . One morning about daybreak I found a canoe and crossed over a chute to the main shore -- it was only two hundred yards -- and paddled about a mile up a crick amongst the cypress woods , to see if I could n't get some berries . Just as I was passing a place where a kind of a cowpath crossed the crick , here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as tight as they could foot it .