midnight
He did not have the heart to take another rise out of the irascible caterer , Mr Stormcock ; while , as for Plumper , the senior mate , I never saw a chap eat in my life as he did . An ostrich of the most enterprising digestion , or the boa-constrictor at the Zoological Gardens who recently swallowed its messmate in a weak moment , would neither of them have been a match for the fat little gourmand , who made even Dobbs stare at his efforts in the knife-and-fork line . We stopped at Plymouth for some four-and-twenty hours , shipping supernumeraries and taking in surplus stores . After which , weighing anchor again , we worked out of the Sound , having to tack twice before clearing the breakwater ; and , resuming our passage we passed the Lizard the same afternoon , being some ten or twelve miles to the southward of the Bishop 's Rock in the Scilly Isles at midnight . I noticed the bright , star-like light of the latter , low down on the horizon , away on our weather quarter , only just dimly discernible in the distance through the haze , when I came on deck for the middle watch , the lighthouse looking to me as if twinkling to us a last farewell from home and the land we had left , never , perhaps , to see again . But , although we made fair enough progress , we were not able to preserve as straight a course as Captain Farmer and the master would have liked to have done . The wind was continually on the shift and trying to head us , thus causing us to keep the ship away and steer more to the southward ; instead of making all the westering we could when leaving the channel , so as to give Cape Ushant , with its erratic currents and treacherous indraught , as wide a berth as possible -- the French coast being a bad lookout under one 's lee at any time !