about noon
But as to the strange rig that they had worn in their days of active sea-faring , I could only guess at it ; for such of them as had come into this death-haven with any of their top-hamper still standing , as some of them no doubt had come , long since had lost it -- first the standing-rigging and later the masts rotting , and so all together falling in a heap anyway upon the decks or over the side . And such a company of withered old sea-corpses as these ancient wrecks made there , all huddled together with the weed thick about them , was as hopeless and as dismal a sight as ever was seen by the eyes of man . But a matter that to me was more instantly dismal , as I pressed on among them , came when I found that I was getting so close to the end of my stock of provisions -- while yet apparently no nearer to the end of my journey -- that there was no shirking the necessity of returning to the distant barque for a fresh supply : a journey involving such desperate toil , and so much of it , that the mere thought of it sent aches through all my bones . It was about noon one day , while I was trying to nerve myself to make this hard expedition , that I called a halt in order to eat my dinner -- which I knew would be a very little one -- being just then come aboard of a great ungainly galleon that from the look of her I thought could not be less than two centuries and a half old : she being more curiously ancient in her build than any vessel that I had got upon , and her timbers so rotten that I had ticklish climbing as I worked my way up her high quarter -- and , indeed , one of her galleries giving way under me , was near to spilling down her tall side to my death beneath the tangled weed . And when at last I got to her deck I found it so soft , partly with rottenness and partly with a sort of moss growing over it , that I was fearful at each step that it would give way under me and let me down with a crash into her hold . I would have been glad of a better place to eat my dinner in -- she being sodden wet everywhere , and with a chill about her for all the warmth of the misty air shimmering with dull sunshine , and with a rank unwholesome smell rising from her rotting mass . But all the hulks thereabouts were in so much the same condition that by going on I was not likely greatly to better myself ; and I was so tired and so hungry that I had no heart to attempt any more hard scrambling until I had had both rest and food .