twelve o'clock
Isabella 's mind was too much occupied with her own thoughts to notice the silence and melancholy of her uncle ; she ate nothing , but her aunt and cousins attributed her want of appetite to the fright of the preceding evening ; as her eyes met their kind and anxious looks , and she thought of her determination to quit them forever , she could not restrain her tears ; but rising hastily from the table , she took shelter from observation and questioning in her own chamber . -- I did compound A certain stuff , which , being ta'en , would cease The present powers of life ; but in short time , All offices of nature should again Do their due functions . CYMBELINE . Shortly after the sea-breeze had set in -- that is , between eleven and twelve o'clock -- a sail was discovered in the western horizon , standing in for the land ; which sail the commander of the Albatross , in a short time , made out , with the help of his glass , to be the guarda-costa , to his no small vexation and disappointment . She stood in , however ; but instead of anchoring as usual , in what may be called the outer harbor , she ran close in to the landing-place , furled her sails , and then , to Captain Williams 's great relief , sent down her fore-yard , stripped it of the sail and rigging , and launched it overboard . Two boats , full of men , were soon seen towing it ashore , the spar having been `` sprung '' in one of those sudden and violent `` flaws '' of wind so peculiar to high and mountainous coasts . All this was extremely gratifying to the commander of the American ship ; in the first place the Venganza -LRB- for that was the warlike name of this redoubtable man-of-war -RRB- , by lying so far up the harbor , was out of the line between the Albatross and the point where it was intended to send a boat that night ; and secondly , the absence of so indispensable a spar as the fore-yard would render pursuit impossible .