about five o'clock
Perhaps she was meditating suicide ; if so I sympathised with her , and since she was obviously going to be sick I trusted that she would bring off the suicide with as little delay as possible . Philippa and Miss Shute sat in unaffected serenity in deck chairs , and stitched at white things -- teacloths for the _ Eileen Oge _ , I believe , things in themselves a mockery -- and talked untiringly , with that singular indifference to their marine surroundings that I have often observed in ladies who are not sea-sick . It always stirs me afresh to wonder why they have not remained ashore ; nevertheless , I prefer their tranquil and total lack of interest in seafaring matters to the blatant Vikingism of the average male who is similarly placed . Somehow , I know not how , we crawled onwards , and by about five o'clock we had rounded the Mizen , a gaunt spike of a headland that starts up like a boar 's tusk above the ragged lip of the Irish coast , and the _ Eileen Oge _ was beginning to swing and wallop in the long sluggish rollers that the American liners know and despise . I was very far from despising them . Down in the west , resting on the sea 's rim , a purple bank of clouds lay awaiting the descent of the sun , as seductively and as malevolently as a damp bed at a hotel awaits a traveller . The end , so far as I was concerned , came at tea-time .