eight o’clock in the evening
Neb prepared some agouti soup , a smoked capybara ham , to which was added the boiled tubercules of the `` caladium macrorhizum , '' an herbaceous plant of the arum family . They had an excellent taste , and were very nutritious , being something similar to the substance which is sold in England under the name of `` Portland sago '' ; they were also a good substitute for bread , which the settlers in Lincoln Island did not yet possess . When supper was finished , before sleeping , Harding and his companions went to take the air on the beach . It was eight o'clock in the evening ; the night was magnificent . The moon , which had been full five days before , had not yet risen , but the horizon was already silvered by those soft , pale shades which might be called the dawn of the moon . At the southern zenith glittered the circumpolar constellations , and above all the Southern Cross , which some days before the engineer had greeted on the summit of Mount Franklin . Cyrus Harding gazed for some time at this splendid constellation , which has at its summit and at its base two stars of the first magnitude , at its left arm a star of the second , and at its right arm a star of the third magnitude .