eight to nine o’clock
It was Mt. Horeb , that biblical Mt. Sinai on whose summit Moses met God face to face , that summit the mind 's eye always pictures as wreathed in lightning . At six o'clock , sometimes afloat and sometimes submerged , the Nautilus passed well out from El Tur , which sat at the far end of a bay whose waters seemed to be dyed red , as Captain Nemo had already mentioned . Then night fell in the midst of a heavy silence occasionally broken by the calls of pelicans and nocturnal birds , by the sound of surf chafing against rocks , or by the distant moan of a steamer churning the waves of the gulf with noisy blades . From eight to nine o'clock , the Nautilus stayed a few meters beneath the waters . According to my calculations , we had to be quite close to Suez . Through the panels in the lounge , I spotted rocky bottoms brightly lit by our electric rays . It seemed to me that the strait was getting narrower and narrower .