1 o'clock
It was all a new experience , and its novelty compelled him at times to pause in his efforts to jot down a few hasty words by light of a little electric flash to preserve in his memory the sequence of the constantly varying features of the night , beginning with the curtain of the shanty-boat which flicked its good luck after him , passing the bright , clear lights of New Madrid . After leaving far behind their glow against the thin haze in the night he `` made '' the scattered shoals of Point Pleasant , and hugged down vanishing Ruddles Point , taking a glimpse of Tiptonville -- which withdraws year by year from the fatal caving brink of its site -- wishing as he passed that he might return to that strange place and visit Reelfoot Lake three or four miles beyond , where the New Madrid earthquakes drowned a forest whose dead stubs rise as monuments to the tragedy . In Little Cypress Bend , twenty-five miles below where he had left the young woman , he heard the splash and thud of a caving bank , and felt the big rollers from the falling earth twisting and tumbling him about for a third of a mile . It was after 1 o'clock when he looked at his watch . He was beginning to feel the pull on his shoulders , and the crick which constantly looking over his shoulder to see the lights ahead caused him . The dulness of his vision , due to inevitable fatigue , compelled him constantly to sit more alert and dash away the fine spray which whipped up from the waves . A feeling of listlessness overpowered him .