two o'clock in the morning
And therewith he clambered noiselessly into the boat and made his way aft to the stern-sheets , where I presently found him with a naked cutlass in his hand , the edge of which he was testing with his thumb , and mumbling his satisfaction at its condition . We now shoved off , and the gig leading , gave way at a long steady stroke , for the southern extremity of the island , which we reached within the hour , although it was a pull of fully three miles . Arrived at the low point , and leaving each boat in charge of a couple of men , we landed ; and as I was marshalling the men upon the beach , the blackness of the night was momentarily dispelled by a blaze of vivid lightning that flashed from the clouds immediately overhead ; and almost simultaneously with the flash there came a crash of thunder that seemed to make the solid ground beneath our feet vibrate and tremble . This was horribly annoying ; for to advance upon the battery in the midst of a storm of lightning was almost certainly to betray ourselves , while time was now of some importance , I being anxious to be aboard the galleon not much later than two o'clock in the morning , that being the hour when man is supposed to sleep his soundest and to be least liable to awake prematurely . However , there was nothing for it but to wait , so I hurriedly ordered the men to lie down behind the ridge of sand which formed the junction of the beach with the grass-land ; and there we crouched , with the lightning flashing and quivering all about us for fully a quarter of an hour . Then down came the rain , not in drops , but in sheets , with the lightning flashing and darting and quivering hither and thither through it , until we appeared to be enveloped in a gigantic diamond ; so exquisitely beautiful were the glancing colours of the lightning through the rain . Of course we were wetted to the skin in an instant , but that did not very greatly matter , as our pistols and ammunition were carried in waterproof cases ; moreover , the rain afforded us an excellent curtain under cover of which to advance ; so at a word from me the men sprang to their feet , and we pushed rapidly forward .