about midnight
We called ourselves fools for having wasted our time up there . Then , on what we had determined should be the last night of our camp , when we had made up our minds to return next day , Eric Petersen came by and joined us . He also had found nothing ; worse still , had spent all he had , and , being down in the mouth , got drunk -- not decently , but gloriously intoxicated . Somewhere about midnight , when , after twenty hours of shining , the sun had disappeared and the world was still bright as day , and we were all sleeping , he got up and went down to the river to bathe his aching head , and stumbled on the banks and , falling in , was nearly drowned . You heard him cry and , waking , ran down to the water 's edge . As you stooped to pull him out , you saw that , where his foot had stumbled on the bank , it had kicked up a nugget . Then you roused us and , when we had prospected and found that gold was really there , we each staked a claim , and you an extra one as discoverer , and set off that same night on the run to register .