midnight
The gear was all good and new , however , and held bravely ; but the motion was so intensely disagreeable , and we shipped so much water over both rails , flooding the main-deck and necessitating the battening down of the hatches , that at length Mrs Vansittart gave orders to start the engine , and the ship was then put stem-on to the swell , which had now become more regular , setting out from about North-North-East . This action brought us immediate relief , as it enabled the helmsman to keep the ship out of the trough , though the violent rolling was exchanged for almost as violent a pitching . But the thunderstorm which Briscoe still persistently maintained was coming , failed to eventuate ; and hour after hour dragged away with no indication of any immediate change , save that the feeble glimmer of moonlight , instead of increasing , gradually died away again , leaving us in almost as bad a plight as before . At midnight , when I went on deck to keep the middle watch , Mrs Vansittart was still up ; and I thought that her temper seemed to be rather on edge , perhaps owing to the strain of the long-spun-out suspense . At least she responded rather sharply to Kennedy 's and my greeting when we joined her on the poop . I thought that perhaps Briscoe had been talking to her during his watch , and doing his best to discredit my judgment , for no sooner had we joined her than she turned upon me , and , in very incisive tones , informed me that she had come to the conclusion that I had been mistaken , and that there was going to be no hurricane after all , otherwise it would have come before then . But I knew that the Indian Ocean hurricane sometimes takes a long time brewing ; indeed , in the case of my previous experience it had threatened for more than ten hours before it actually burst upon us .