midnight
repeated Marshall . `` Let me see . This will make the second complete night that we have been absent from the ship -- although it seems very much longer . Stay here , if necessary , for four days and nights longer , as arranged with Bascomb ; and if I am not back by midnight of the fourth night my orders are that you are to rejoin the ship , report to Winter and Bascomb all that we have done and learned ; and say it is my wish that they shall act as may seem to them best , and without any reference at all to what may have become of me ; for if I do not return to you by the time that I have named it will be because I can not , having fallen into the hands of the Spaniards . And now , if you are ready , let us be going . '' Silently , and with the observance of every precaution to prevent betrayal of the longboat 's hiding-place to any chance wanderer in the neighbourhood , the pair forced a way through their leafy bower and up the steep bank until they emerged upon clear ground , when , bearing away to the eastward round the foot of the hill which they had that day ascended , they groped their way cautiously over the unfamiliar ground until , in the course of about half an hour , they caught the dim shimmer of starlight upon water , and , between them and it , a group of dark , shapeless blotches which , upon their nearer approach , they identified as the hovels constituting the fishing village which they had seen during the day from the top of the hill . Circling round these , they presently reached the water 's edge , where , as they had fully anticipated , they found a dozen or more canoes of various sizes hauled up on the beach , most of them with their nets piled up in their sterns .