three
o'clock
But , on the principle of _ timeo Danaos _ etc. , I instantly smelt a ruse , not that I dreamt that I was to be decoyed into captivity ; but if there was anything here which we two might discover in the few hours left to us , it was an ingenious plan to remove the most observant of the two till the hour of departure . Davies scorned them , and I had felt only a faint curiosity in these insignificant hamlets , influenced , I am afraid , chiefly by a hankering after _ terra firma _ which the pitiless rigour of his training had been unable to cure . But it was imprudent to neglect the slightest chance . It was three o'clock , and I think both our brains were beginning to be addled with thinking in close confinement . I suggested that we should finish our council of war in the open , and we both donned oilskins and turned out . The sky had hardened and banked into an even canopy of lead , and the wind drove before it a fine cold rain . You could hear the murmur of the rising flood on the sands outside , but the harbour was high above it still , and the _ Dulcibella _ and the other boats squatted low in a bed of black slime .