midnight
Some hours passed . The wind had died out and the sea was rapidly going down , but a strange feeling of uneasiness had come upon the occupants of the little vessel . Visit after visit had been paid to the cabins , and the watches which had been consulted and doubted were now acknowledged to be trusty and truth-telling , for the chronometers supported their evidence and announced that it was well on toward noon of the next day . Though to all appearance it was midnight of the blackest , dense clouds shutting out the sky , while the long-continued darkness had a singularly depressing effect upon men worn out by their struggle with the storm . Arthur Panton , the mineralogist of the little expedition , had pretty well recovered from the battering he had received , and he at once gave his opinion as to the cause of the darkness . `` I can not speak learnedly upon the subject , '' he said , `` but these terrible storms , as Mr Rimmer says , do appear to be somehow connected with electric disturbances , and often enough these latter seem to be related to volcanic eruptions . '' `` And you think there is a volcanic eruption somewhere near ? ''