about nine o'clock in the
morning
The weather had by this time reverted to quite its normal condition ; the trade-wind was blowing steadily , the sea had gone down , and I had nothing worse than a somewhat heavy swell to contend with ; I therefore felt that , unless I should be so unfortunate as to fall in with another gale , there was no reason at all why I should not reach my destination safely , and without very much discomfort . My only trouble was that , running , as the boat now was , with the wind so far over the starboard quarter , I dared not release my hold upon the tiller for an instant , lest she should broach-to and , possibly , capsize . Whenever , therefore , it became necessary for me to quit the helm for the purpose of taking an astronomical observation , or otherwise , I had to heave-to , and , occasionally , to shorten sail while doing so , which kept me pretty actively employed , off and on , all day . Thus , about nine o'clock in the morning , I had to heave-to and leave the boat to take care of herself while I secured observations of the sun for the determination of the longitude ; the same procedure had to be adopted again at noon when I took the sun 's altitude for the determination of the latitude ; and the preparation of a meal involved a further repetition of the manoeuvre . Thus I had no time to feel lonely , at least during the hours of daylight ; but after nightfall , surrounded and hemmed in by the gloom and mystery of the darkness , with no companionship save that of the multitudinous stars -- which , to my mind , never betray their immeasurable distance so clearly as when one is in mid-ocean -- with the sough and moan of the night wind and the soft , seething hiss of the sea whispering in one 's ears , the feeling of loneliness becomes almost an obsession , the sense of all-pervading mystery persistently obtrudes itself , and one quickly falls into a condition of readiness to believe the most incredible of the countless weird stories that sailors love to relate to each other , especially when this condition of credulity is helped , as it sometimes is , by the sudden irruption of some strange , unaccountable sound , or succession of sounds , upon the peaceful quietude and serenity of the night . These sounds are occasionally of the weirdest and most hair-raising quality ; and while the startled listener may possibly have heard it asserted , time and again , by superior persons , that they emanate from sea birds , or from fish , he is perfectly satisfied that neither sea birds nor fish have ever been known to emit such sounds _ in the daytime _ , and the strain of superstition within him awakes and whispers all sorts of uncanny suggestions , the sea bird and fish theory being rejected with scorn . Moreover , those harrowingly mysterious sounds seem never to make themselves audible save when the accompanying circumstances are such as to conduce to the most startling and thrilling effect ; thus , although I had now been knocking about at sea for more than three years , and had met with many queer experiences , I had never , thus far , heard a sound that I could not reasonably account for and attribute to some known source ; yet on this particular night -- my second night alone in the longboat -- I was sitting comfortably enough in the stern-sheets , steering by a star -- for I had no lantern wherewith to illuminate my compass -- and thinking of nothing in particular , when suddenly a most unearthly cry came pealing out of the darkness on the starboard beam , seemingly not half a dozen yards away , and was twice repeated .