three o'clock
Off and on he must have kept this up for more than an hour ; then at length he subsided , finding , I suppose , that one German baker , however infuriated , was unable to make an impression on a three-inch deck . By the end of the second hour we had forgotten all about him , for heeling over in the pleasant breeze , and what with singing and telling stories and flirting in the moonlight we were all too happy and too busy to take thought of the stifling lovers below our feet . Occasionally I had a haunting sense of a day of reckoning , but I held my peace and forebore to disquiet my pretty hostess , who was the life and soul of the whole party aboard , and whose silvery laughter chimed in so sweetly with the tropic night and the rippling gurgle of water along our keel . It was past three o'clock when we picked up the Mission light and ran back to our moorings off the Firm . Then the question arose as to who would uncage our love-birds and bear the first brunt of Silver Tongue 's explosion . I confess I was very little eager for the job , and felt a peculiar sinking in the region of my watch pocket as we unlocked the after-hatch and rolled it softly back , Sasa , with a bull 's - eye lantern penetrating the gloom with a dazzling circle of light . It fell on the figures of Rosalie and Silver Tongue seated on a settee and locked in each other 's arms .