ten o'clock in the morning
A few days after leaving Nouméa , Poore took me into his confidence , and told me that , although he certainly intended to make a trading and recruiting voyage , he had another object in view , and that was to satisfy himself as to the location of some immense copper deposits that had been discovered on Rook Island -- midway between New Britain and New Guinea -- by some shipwrecked seamen . Twenty-two days out from Nouméa , the _ Samana _ , as the schooner was named , anchored in a well-sheltered and densely-wooded little bay on the east side of Rook Island . The place was uninhabited , though , far back , from the lofty mountains of the interior , we could see several columns of smoke arising , showing the position of mountaineer villages . It was then ten o'clock in the morning , and Poore , feeling certain that in this part of the coast there were no native villages , determined to go ashore , and do a little prospecting . -LRB- I must mention that , owing to light weather and calms , we had been obliged to anchor where we had to avoid being drifted on shore by the fierce currents , which everywhere sweep and eddy around Rook Island , and that we were quite twenty miles from the place where the copper lode had been discovered . -RRB- Taking with us two of the native seamen , Poore and I set off on shore shortly after ten o'clock , and landed on a rough , shingly beach . The extent of littoral on this part of the island was very small , a bold lofty chain of mountains coming down to within a mile of the sea , and running parallel with the coast as far as we could see .