five o’clock in the morning of the 25th
of March
Towards midnight the stars shone out , and if the engineer had been there with his companions he would have remarked that these stars did not belong to the Northern Hemisphere . The Polar Star was not visible , the constellations were not those which they had been accustomed to see in the United States ; the Southern Cross glittered brightly in the sky . The night passed away . Towards five o'clock in the morning of the 25th of March , the sky began to lighten ; the horizon still remained dark , but with daybreak a thick mist rose from the sea , so that the eye could scarcely penetrate beyond twenty feet or so from where they stood . At length the fog gradually unrolled itself in great heavily moving waves . It was unfortunate , however , that the castaways could distinguish nothing around them . While the gaze of the reporter and Neb were cast upon the ocean , the sailor and Herbert looked eagerly for the coast in the west .