about midnight
His father had told him how it had come ashore in the hand of a dead woman , thirty years ago . Now the carven image of the Saviour seemed to gleam out from the black of the cross and the shadowy wall as if with an inner illumination . Black Dennis Nolan made the sign with an awkward and unaccustomed finger , and then went swiftly from the room . The skipper , Bill Brennen and Nick Leary left their cabins stealthily about midnight , met on the snowy barren above the harbor , and tramped southward to the vicinity of Nolan 's Cove . They worked for a little while in a clump of spruce-tuck , then moved off to another thicket about half a mile away , and there worked again . `` There bes some men in this harbor I would n't trust as far as I could t ` row 'em over my back , '' said the skipper . Bill and Nick agreed with him .