about midnight
He was sober , steady , knew his duty well ; but he weighed twenty-six stone , and his weight had swamped him in the service . His wish , long indulged , had become , as Shakespeare says , the father of his thought , and he had really at last brought himself to think that he was not by any means what could be considered a fat man . His wife , as he said , was also a very stout woman , and this exuberance of flesh on both sides , was the only , but continual , ground of dispute . On the eleventh day the Rebiera entered the Straits , and the Rock of Gibraltar was in sight as the sun went down ; after which the wind fell light , and about midnight it became calm , and they drifted up . At sunrise they were roused by the report of heavy guns , and perceived an English frigate about eight miles farther up the Straits , and more in the mid-channel , engaging nine or ten Spanish gunboats , which had come out from Algesiras to attack her . It still continued a dead calm , and the boats of the frigate were all ahead towing her , so as to bring her broadside to bear upon the Spanish flotilla . The reverberating of the heavy cannon on both sides over the placid surface of the water -- the white smoke ascending as the sun rose in brilliancy in a clear blue sky -- the distant echoes repeated from the high hills -- had a very beautiful effect for those who are partial to the picturesque .