noon
These sunsets at the end of my Thursday holidays always overwhelmed me with melancholy . During the last minutes of my stay I felt a desire , one I had never known before , to rummage in the old Louis XV bookcase that stood near my bed . There among the volumes in their century-old bindings , where the worms , never disturbed , slowly bored their galleries , I found a book made of thick rough old-fashioned paper , and this I opened carelessly . ... In it I read , with a thrill of emotion , that from noon until four o'clock in the afternoon , on the 20th of June , 1813 , south of the equator , in longitude 110 and latitude 15 -LRB- between the tropics , consequently , and in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean -RRB- there was fair weather , a beautiful sea , a fine southeast breeze , and in the sky many little clouds called `` cat-tails , '' and that alongside the ship dolphins were passing . He who had seen the dolphins pass , and who had recorded the fugitive cloud forms had doubtless been dead for many years . I knew that the book was what is called a ship 's log-book , one in which seafaring people write every day . Its appearance did not strike me as strange , although I had never before had one in my hand .