about four o'clock in the afternoon
`` All that day we continued driving ahead , for we could not stop , or wear the boat round , or do anything but simply let her go where the wind chose to take her . We could not even lower the mainsail , as if we had done so it might have capsized her , besides which , as long as it held out without being blown away , although it almost made the pinnace bury her nose in the waves in front , it prevented the following rollers behind from coming too close , just keeping way enough on her to be out of their reach . But , it was a perilous run of it , and every big comber that raced after us looked as if it would overtake our tiny craft and swamp her ! `` By about four o'clock in the afternoon , as near as we could reckon , we sighted the highlands of Madagascar , for it could n't be any other coast from the direction we had been sailing in ever since midnight . The land was right ahead and some distance off yet ; but approaching it rapidly as we did , it made us tremble , for unless we could manage to steer inside the reef that lay outside the shore of the island , the same as at Saint Juan , we must be dashed against the cliffs . It was wonderful to think we had run all that distance in less than twenty-four hours . `` How we did it I 'm sure I ca n't tell , but I believe in addition to the force of the wind , that must have driven us at the rate of twenty knots an hour , more or less , there was a strong easterly current in the Mozambique Channel with the south-west monsoon , and this must have carried us so speedily across from the Comoro Islands .