ten o'clock
'T was just such another lump of faintness as had wrecked the _ Laughing Mary _ , a mass of dull spectral light upon the throbbing blackness , and it lay exactly in a line with the course we had been steering when Pitt first called out , so that assuredly we had not shifted our helm a minute too soon . We chopped and wallowed past it slowly , keeping a sharp look-out for like apparitions in other quarters , and when it had disappeared , I made up my mind to heave the schooner to and keep her in that posture till daylight , unless the night cleared . So we got the mainsail down and stowed it , clewed up the topsail -LRB- which I lent a hand to roll up -RRB- , and let the vessel lie under a reefed foresail with her helm lashed . The weather , however , must have ultimately compelled what the thickness had required ; for by ten o'clock it was blowing a hard gale , with a frequent hoariness of clouds of snow upon the blackness , the seas very high and foaming , and the wind crying madly in the rigging . I let some time go by , and then sounded the well and found no more water than the depth at which the pumps sucked . This did wonders in the way of reassuring the men , who were rendered uneasy by the violent motions of the unwieldy vessel , and by the very harsh straining noises which rose out of the hold , which latter they would naturally attribute to the craziness of the fabric , though the true cause of it lay in the number of loose , movable bulkheads . `` It 's amazin ' to me that she holds together at all , '' cried Wilkinson , `` so ancient she is ! ''