six o'clock
While the vessel was going around the coasts of France and Spain , he could , if it so pleased him , stay for a week in Paris , or at any other place , and then take the mail packet either to Alexandria or Suez , and rejoin the `` Alaska '' at either of those places ; or he could even defer doing so until they reached Singapore or Yokohama . But this was only a possibility . The fact was that he was no longer on board , and that he could not cast a damper upon the spirits of the company . Their dinner , also , which they took at six o'clock , as usual , was the gayest which they had yet sat down to . At dessert they drank to the success of the expedition , and every one , in his heart , associated it , more or less , with the absence of Tudor Brown . Then they went on deck and smoked their cigars . It was a dark night , but in the distance toward the north they could see the light of Cape Saint Matthew .