midnight
Thereupon , Jane giving me a final hug , my chest was bundled below in a brace of shakes , and Sam and I , accompanied by the man wheeling the truck , were on our way down the Stoke Road towards Plymouth -- a lingering glance which I cast behind , in order to give a farewell wave of the hand to my second mother , imprinting on my memory every detail of the little cottage , with its clematis-covered porch , and the bright scarlet geraniums and fuchsias in full bloom in front , and Jane Pengelly 's tearful face standing out amidst the flowers , crying out a last loving `` good-bye ! '' We reached the schooner in good time so as to fetch out of the Sound before the tide ebbed , and , after clearing the breakwater , as the wind was to the northward of east , Sam made a short board on the port tack towards the Eddystone , in order to catch the western stream -- which begins to run down Channel an hour after the flood , when about six miles out or so from the land , the current inshore setting up eastwards towards the Start and being against us if we tried to stem it by proceeding at once on our true course . When we had got into the stream , however , and thus had the advantage of having the tideway with us , Sam let the schooner 's head fall off ; and so , wearing her round , he shaped a straight course for the Lizard , almost in the line of a crow 's flight , bringing the wind nearly right aft to us now on the starboard tack as we ran before it . We passed abreast of the goggle-eyed lighthouse on the point which marks the landfall for most mariners when returning to the English Channel after a foreign voyage , close on to midnight -- not a bad run from Plymouth Sound , which we had left at four o'clock in the afternoon . It was a beautiful bright moonlight night , the sea being lighted up like a burnished mirror , and the clear orb making the distant background of the Cornish coast come out in relief , far away on our western bow . The wind being still fair for us , keeping to the east-nor ' - east , Sam brought it more abeam , bearing up so that he might pass between the Wolf Rock and the Land 's End , striking across the bight made by Mount 's Bay in order to save the way we would have lost if he had taken the inshore track , like most coasters -- and , indeed , as he would have been obliged to do if it had been foggy or rough , which , fortunately for us , it was n't . By sunrise next morning we had fetched within a couple of miles of the Longships ; when , bracing round the schooner 's topsail yard and sailing close-hauled , with the wind nearly on our bow , we ran for Lundy Island in the British Channel .