about six o'clock in
the morning
I crept to the parapet of the roof and saw the stained eastern window of the chapel a few yards below me , saw its painted saints and martyrs , outlined in lead , dull against the noonday glow . And from within came no sound at all . D'ARFET 'S VENGEANCE _ The Story is Told by Dom Bartholomew Perestrello , Governor of the Island of Porto Santo _ . It was on the fifteenth day of August , 1428 , and about six o'clock in the morning , that while taking the air on the seaward side of my house at Porto Santo , as my custom was after breaking fast , I caught sight of a pinnace about two leagues distant , and making for the island . I dare say it is commonly known how I came to the governance of Porto Santo , to hold it and pass it on to my son Bartholomew ; how I sailed to it in the year 1420 in company with the two honourable captains John Gonsalvez Zarco and Tristram Vaz ; and what the compact was which we made between us , whereby on reaching Porto Santo these two left me behind and passed on to discover the greater island of Madeira . And many can tell with greater or less certainty of our old pilot , the Spaniard Morales , and how he learned of such an island in his captivity on the Barbary coast . Of all this you shall hear , and perhaps more accurately , when I come to my meeting with the Englishman .