six in the afternoon
First would I show you it at the steaming out , upon deck , arrogant and heroic as it was , forming a glory round that handsome Tarasconian head . Next would I show you it at the harbour-mouth , when the bark began to caper upon the waves ; I would depict it for you all of a quake in astonishment , and as though already experiencing the preliminary qualms of sea-sickness . Then , in the Gulf of the Lion , proportionably to the nearing the open sea , where the white caps heaved harder , I would make you behold it wrestling with the tempest , and standing on end upon the hero 's cranium , with its mighty mane of blue wool bristling out in the spray and breeze . Position Fourth : at six in the afternoon , with the Corsican coast in view ; the unfortunate chechia hangs over the ship 's side , and lamentably stares down as though to plumb the depths of ocean . Finally and lastly , the Fifth Position : at the back of a narrow state-room , in a box-bed so small it seemed one drawer in a nest of them , something shapeless rolled on the pillow with moans of desolation . This was the fez -- the fez so defiant at the sailing , now reduced to the vulgar condition of a nightcap , and pulled down over the very ears of the head of a pallid and convulsed sufferer . How the people of Tarascon would have kicked themselves for having constrained the great Tartarin to leave home , if they had but seen him stretched in the bunk in the dull , wan gleam through the dead-light , amid the sickly odour of cooking and wet wood -- the heart-heaving perfume of mail-boats ; if they had but heard him gurgle at every turn of the screw , wail for tea every five minutes , and swear at the steward in a childish treble !