noon
Toward three o'clock in the afternoon an iceberg came of it ; with a wrecked ship stove in , and frozen fast to the ice ; and the passengers and crew nigh to death with cold and exhaustion . Wonderful enough , you will say ; but more remains behind . As the mate was helping one of the rescued passengers up the side of the bark , who should he turn out to be but the very man whose ghostly appearance Bruce had seen in the captain 's cabin writing on the captain 's slate ! And more than that -- if your capacity for being surprised is n't clean worn out by this time -- the passenger recognized the bark as the very vessel which he had seen in a dream at noon that day . He had even spoken of it to one of the officers on board the wrecked ship when he woke . ` We shall be rescued to-day , ' he had said ; and he had exactly described the rig of the bark hours and hours before the vessel herself hove in view . Now you know , Mr. Germaine , how my wife 's far-away cousin kept an appointment with a ghost , and what came of it . ''