ten o'clock at night
We might get all that ivory , '' put in Gerald , with interest . `` I think I heard somewhere , but I 'll not be sure about it , '' suggested the cautious Don , `` that there 's more than five hundred and ninety thousand square miles in Alaska , and I ha'e me doots that we find it the verra first day . '' Despite these gibes , their interest was aroused and the cave , whose mouth was shaped like the ace of clubs , figured not a little in the imaginations of the boys , when , followed by the good wishes of relatives , neighbors and friends , they entrained the next morning like true soldiers in their patrol uniforms , and from the rear platform of the train , sounded the Scout salute to their native town upon their bugles . Four days later they joined Colonel Snow , who had preceded them , in Seattle , and , after two days of sightseeing in the Washington metropolis , boarded the `` Queen , '' and at ten o'clock at night , steamed out upon Puget 's Sound , for their long trip of nearly a thousand miles on the water . Among the cases of machinery and other freight , traveling in the vessel 's hold under Colonel Snow 's name , was a long box shaped like an old-fashioned piano case , which had nothing to do with Colonel Snow 's enterprises . Despite the fact that it weighed more than half a ton , the boys had clubbed together to pay the rather exorbitant freight charges upon it . Superfluous as it appeared at one time to the Colonel , it was destined to play an important part in the Scouts ' adventures in the land of gold and glaciers .