two o'clock
No one must know that this ship , secretly restored from the ravages of her former crew , entertained the slightest idea of sailing ; not one of the swarm of spies in German pay , infesting New York and its environs , must suspect this midnight-to-dawn embarkation ! So , while Jeb slept , tugs quietly warped her out , towed her in ghostlike fashion toward the Bay and turned her free . By daylight she was over the horizon . And no one suspected that before daylight one of the sweating stevedores , washed and smartly dressed , left his back-hall room in a Hoboken boarding house , crossed to New York and entered a telephone booth in a large hotel ; thereupon calling an uptown number and telling a keen-eyed man who listened gratefully that his wife was out of danger and the doctor had left at two o'clock . Later that morning one of the commercial messages which loaded the telegraph wires sped to a merchant in Buenos Ayres asking quotations on 8,000 feet of 2-A grade mahogany veneer ; and , half an hour later , the Swedish Legation there was telling Berlin that , upon this date , at 2 A. M. , a steamer of 8,000 tons burden had cleared New York , destination France . When the bugles sounded reveille Jeb fell out with the others . This taste of the military was decidedly acceptable to him .