about four in the morning
Strengthened by this philosophic reasoning , and filled with prudence , the pulquero closed his door , and went to bed in order to fetch up by day the sleep his singular curiosities had made him lose during the night . -LSB- 1 -RSB- What rumour resounds in the distance which interrupts the placid silence of the dark night ? -LSB- 2 -RSB- Can it be the rapid gallop of a horse urged along a narrow road -- or the ferocious howling of a starving beast of prey -- or , perchance , the whistling of the north-west wind ? It was about four in the morning ; the dawn was beginning to mark the horizon with wide white bands ; on the extreme line of the water , a bright red reflection , the harbinger of sunrise , announced that the sun would soon appear . At this moment a light brig gradually emerged from the dense fog that hid it , and could be seen sailing close to the wind along the dangerous and rugged coast which forms the entrance of Galveston Bay , at the mouth of the Rio Trinidad . It was a neat vessel of three hundred tons at the most , with a gracefully-built hull , and its tall masts coquettishly raking . The rigging was carefully painted and tarred , the yards symmetrically square , and more than all , the menacing muzzles of four eight-pounder carronades which peered out of the bulwarks on either side , and the long thirty-two pounder swivel in the bows , indicated that , although a man-of-war pennant might not be flying from the mainmast , it was not the less resolved , in case of necessity , to fight energetically against the cruisers that might attempt to check its progress .