Weird behavior of the <!–more–> tag, please help

When I create a new post and break it with the <!–more–> tag, the “Continue reading” message appears under the truncated post when I view the homepage.

However, I want to change the “Continue reading” text to something else, so instead of <!–more–> I use <!–more My text here –>. Now here’s the problem: when I view the homepage, the post is truncated where the <!–more –> tag was inserted (expected behavior), however my custom text is missing (unexpected behavior)! There’s not even the default “Continue reading” text, instead, the number of comments is displayed.

I read some articles on the Codex, but all instructions say that I should be able to see the truncated post and the custom <!–more–> text under it. So something is definitely wrong.

I’m using a freshly installed WordPress 2.8.1.