midnight
I knew that if the cyclonic scope was general , ships were having trouble , but in that thought lurked a vague hope . If any power were to drive a vessel to my rescue it would be a power which carried sailors out of their ordered courses . One night , some six months after the wreck of the _ Wastrel _ , when the skies were serene again I found myself more than ordinarily adrift on the tide of imagination . The march of the stars showed that midnight had passed , and yet the natives sat unhurried , and I , as unhurried as they , was still absorbed with the violin . My eyes traveled out to sea , absently and without reason . Suddenly the bow stopped half-way across the strings with a rasping gasp of the catgut . The instrument itself fell from my hands and I sat rigid and staring like a man suddenly stricken .