noon
Thenceforth the Brotherhoods were united against him . The current of our story takes us once more to the White Castle at the mouth of the Sweet Waters of Asia . It is the twenty-fifth of March , 1452 . The weather , for some days cloudy and tending to the tempestuous , changed at noon , permitting the sun to show himself in a field of spotless blue . At the edge of the mountainous steep above Roumeli Hissar , the day-giver lingered in his going down , as loath to leave the life concentrated in the famous narrows in front of the old Castle . On the land , there was an army in waiting ; therefore the city of tents and brushwood booths extending from the shore back to the hills , and the smoke pervading the perspective in every direction . On the water , swinging to each other , crowding all the shallows of the delta of the little river , reaching out into the sweep of the Bosphorus , boats open and boats roofed -- scows , barges , galleys oared and galleys with masts -- ships -- a vast conglomerate raft .