six
o’clock
It was the sight of the big , brown guns did it , and the cutlasses in their racks , and the clean-limbed , bare-throated Jackies , and the watch-officer stamping the deck just as though he were at sea , with his glass and side-arms . And when the marine at the gate of the yard shifted his gun and challenged me , it was so like old times that I could have fallen on his neck and hugged him . Over the wharves , all along my way to the ferry , the names of strange and beautiful ports mocked at me from the sheds of the steam-ship lines ; `` Bahia , Rio de Janeiro , and the River Plata , '' `` Guayaquil , Callao , and Santiago , '' `` Cape Town , Durban , and Lorenzo Marquez . '' It was past six o'clock and very dark . The ice was pushing and grinding against the pier-heads , and through the falling snow the tall buildings in New York twinkled with thousands of electric lights , like great Christmas-trees . At one wharf a steamer of the Red D line , just in from La Guayra , was making fast , and I guiltily crept on board . Without , she was coated in a shearing of ice , but within she reeked of Spanish-America -- of coffee , rubber , and raw sugar .