three in the morning
The slow , eternal deep-sea swell was most perceptible : a ceaseless impulse of infinite power running through the pettier , if more threatening , drive of waves kicked up by the wind . Fortunately the course , shifting to northeast by east , presently took them out of the swinging trough of the sea . The rollers now led them on , an endless herd , one after another falling sullenly behind as the two boats shot down into their shallow intervals and began to creep slowly up over the long gray backs of those that ran before . It was after three in the morning , and , though Whitaker had no means of knowing it , they were on the last and longest leg of the cruise . They still had moonlight , but it was more wan and ghastly and threatened presently to fail them altogether , blotted out by the thickening weather . The wind was blowing with an insistent , unintermittent force it had not before developed . A haze , vaguely opalescent , encircled the horizon like a ghost of absinthe .