midnight
Alone , unintimidated , but not altogether comfortable , Jimmy Phoebus proceeded to bail out the old scow , and wished he had accepted one of Jack Wonnell 's hats to do the task , and , when he had finished it , the stars and clouds were manoeuvring around each other in the sky , with the clouds the more aggressive , and finally some drops of rain punctured the long , bare muscles of the inflowing tide , making a reticule of little pittings , like a net of beads on drifting women 's tresses . As night advanced , a puffing something ascended the broad , black aisle of this forest river , and slowly the Norfolk steamboat rumbled past , with passengers for the Philadelphia stage . Then silence drew a sheet of fog around herself and passed into a cold torpor of repose , affected only by the waves that licked the shores with intermittent thirst . The waterman , regretting a little that he had not taken his stand at Vienna , where human assistance might have been procured , and thinking that the poison airs might also afflict him with Meshach Milburn 's complaints , fought sleep away till midnight , straining his eyes and ears ever and anon for signs of some sail ; but nothing drew near , and he had insensibly closed his lids and might have soon been in deep sleep , but that he suddenly heard , between his dreams and this world , something like a little baby moaning in the night . He sat up in the damp scow , where he had been lying , and listened with all his senses wide open , and once again the cry was wafted upon the river zephyrs , and before it died away the sailor 's paddle was in the water , and his frail , awkward vessel was darting across the tide . He saw , in the black night , what none but a sailor 's eyes would have seen , a thing not visible , but divined , coming along on the bosom of the river ; and his ears saw it the clearer as that little cry continued -- now stopped , now stifled , now rising , now nearly piercing ; and then there was a growl , momentary and loud , and a rattle as of feet over wood , and a stroke or thud , or heavy concussion , and then a white thing rose up against the universal ink and rushed on the little scow , sucking water as it came -- the cat-boat under full sail . Phoebus had paddled for the opposite shore of the river to prevent the object of his quest escaping up the Northwest Fork , yet to be in its path if it beat up the main fork , and , by a piece of instinctive calculation , he had run nearly under the cat-boat bows .