nearly midnight
`` Mates , what I 'm goin ' to tell you is as true as that I 'm sittin ' here on this here thwart : the mate was took ill that very night ; and the next day he follered poor Mr Hobbs and the skipper over the rail ; and then the three sharks left us . And a week later the brig went ashore on the coast , about the middle of as dark a night as ever you see , and me and two more was all as managed to reach the sand-hills alive . '' This weird story , told with all the impressiveness of a man who knew himself to be speaking the truth -- emphasised as it was by the persistent presence of those two remorseless brutes under our own stern , -- affected the listeners powerfully ; and at its close there was not one of us , I will venture to say , but was firmly convinced that at least two of our party were doomed . We continued pulling to the eastward until nearly midnight that night , relieving each other at the oars at short intervals , when , suddenly , one of the men -- Peter Green by name -- dropped his oar and , with a choking cry , rolled off his thwart and fell prone into the bottom of the boat . His place was immediately taken by another ; but within a quarter of an hour this man , too , was obliged to give up ; and so , one after the other , they all succumbed , until only Dumaresq and myself were left ; and we had not been tugging at the oars five minutes when the Frenchman cried : `` It is no good , _ mon ami _ ; I am ` gastados ' , as the Spaniards say ; I am expended , worn out ! '' He rose to his feet ; staggered heavily aft , and sank down in the stern-sheets with a groan and a gasping cry of : `` Water ! water !