noon
` And , as it happens , ' said he , `` tis the very reason why Mr. Badcock himself goes with us : for my son , when he becomes king , will need a Fool , and I have brought a couple in case of accidents . ' `` We started then , as Master Prosper will remember , a little before dark ; and having lanterns to light the track , and now and then the north star between the tree-tops to give us our bearings , we crossed the valley and came out through a kind of pass upon a second slope , a little nor ' - west of the spot where I happened yesterday on Master Prosper . By this , Sir John 's watch marked ten o'clock and finding us dead-beat by the roughness of the track , he commanded us to lie down and sleep . `` The next morning , after studying his map , he started afresh , still holding northward in the main but bearing back a little to the left -- that is , toward the sea , which before noon we brought in sight at a place he called La Piana , where , he said , was a fishing village ; and so no doubt there was , for we spied a two-three boats moored a little way out from the shore -- looking down upon them through a cleft in the rocks . The village itself we did not see , but skirted it upon high ground and came down to the foreshore a short two miles beyond it ; where we found a beach and a spit of rock , and on the spit a tumble-down tower standing , as lonely as a combed louse . Above the beach ran a tolerable coast road , which divided itself into two , after crossing a bridge behind the tower ; the one following the shore , the other striking inland up the devil of a gorge . This inland road we took , for two reasons ; the first , that by the map it appeared to cut off a corner of our journey ; the second , because the map showed a village , not three miles up the gorge , where we might get advice .