about noon
And the sight of her , and the thought of how comfortable and how safe I had been aboard of her , and of how I was done with her forever and was tying to as slim a chance of life as ever a man tied to , for a while put a great heaviness upon my heart . Not until darkness came and shut her out from me , and I was resting in my brightly lighted comfortable little cabin -- with my supper to cheer me , and with my cat to cheer me too -- did my spirits rise again ; and I was glad , when I got under way once more in the morning , that the heavy mist cut her off from me -- and that by the time the sun had thinned the mist a little I had made such progress as to put her out of sight of me for good and all . Through my second day I still could make out the loom of the wreck-pack behind me -- a dark line low down in the mist that I should have taken for a rain-cloud had I not known what it was ; but that also was pretty well gone by evening , and from my third day onward I was encompassed wholly by the soft veil of golden mist hanging low around me over the weed-covered sea . Only about noon time , when this veil grew thinner and had in it a brighter golden tone -- or at sunset , when it was shot through with streams of crimson light which filled it with a ruddy glow -- was it possible for me to see for more than a mile or so in any direction ; and even when my horizon thus was enlarged a little my view still was the same : always the weed spread out over the water so thickly that nowhere was there the slightest break in it , and so dense and solid that it would have seemed like land around me but for its very gentle undulating motion -- which made me giddy if I looked at it for long at a time . The only relief to this dull flat surface was when I came upon a wrecked ship , or upon a hummock of wreckage , rising a little up from it -- also swaying very gently with a wearying motion that seemed as slow as time . And the silent despairing desolateness of it all sunk down into my very soul . Even my cat seemed to feel the misery of that great loneliness and lost so much of his cheerfulness that he got to be but a dull companion for me ; though likely enough what ailed him was the reflex of my own poor spirits , made low by my constant bodily weariness , and had I shown any liveliness he would have been lively too .