about five o'clock
The fires were certainly at an end ; and if it were impossible to determine their cause , one might at least hope that they would not break out again . It appeared possible that the Great Eyrie had not really been the theater of volcanic phenomena at all . There was no further evidence that the neighborhood was at the mercy either of eruptions or of earthquakes . Yet once more about five o'clock , from beneath the ridge of the mountain , where the shadows of night still lingered , a strange noise swept across the air , a sort of whirring , accompanied by the beating of mighty wings . And had it been a clear day , perhaps the farmers would have seen the passage of a mighty bird of prey , some monster of the skies , which having risen from the Great Eyrie sped away toward the east . The twenty-seventh of April , having left Washington the night before , I arrived at Raleigh , the capital of the State of North Carolina . Two days before , the head of the federal police had called me to his room .