midnight
`` Sailing one direction , drifting another direction , to say nothing of the set of the current in some third direction , makes a resultant which dead reckoning can never calculate . Before long we wo n't know where we are by five hundred miles . '' Then I begged her pardon and promised I should not be disheartened any more . At her solicitation I let her take the watch till midnight , -- it was then nine o'clock , but I wrapped her in blankets and put an oilskin about her before I lay down . I slept only cat-naps . The boat was leaping and pounding as it fell over the crests , I could hear the seas rushing past , and spray was continually being thrown aboard . And still , it was not a bad night , I mused -- nothing to the nights I had been through on the _ Ghost _ ; nothing , perhaps , to the nights we should go through in this cockle-shell .