The Genoese captain who had sailed the boat to Lerici, said that she sailed and worked well, but was a ticklish boat to manage. Shelley and Williams, enthusiastic but incompetent yachtsmen, had insisted on having her built to a design made by a naval officer for Williams, before he left England. The lovely sweeping lines of the model enchanted them, but the boat when built to plan required a couple of tons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and even then was very crank in a breeze. The two owners of the _Ariel_ determined to man her themselves, with the help of Charles Vivian, a young sailor. Shelley was awkward as a woman in all things appertaining to boats, but full of good intentions. He tangled himself up in the rigging, read Sophocles while trying to steer, and several times just missed falling overboard. But never in his life had he been so happy. When Trelawny saw his seamanship, he took Williams by the arm and advised him to add to the crew a Genoese accustomed to the coast. Williams was hurt . . . three seasoned sailors such as they . . . and was he not Captain? And had he not Shelley? “Shelley! You’ll never do any good with him until you shear the wisps of hair that hang over his eyes, heave his Greek Poets overboard, and plunge his arms up to the elbow in a tar-bucket.” The _Ariel_ drew too much water to be run on shore at Casa Magni, so Williams with the aid of a carpenter built a tiny dinghy of basketwork, covered with tarred canvas. It was a fragile toy which upset at a touch. The Poet was delighted with it, although it capsized continually, and gave him many a ducking. One evening, as he dragged the skiff out from the house, he saw Jane and her two children on the sands. He invited her to bring them for a row. “With careful stowage,” said he, “there is room for us all in my barge.” She squatted in the bottom of the frail skiff with her babies, and the gunwale sank to within six inches of the water; a puff of wind, the smallest movement of any one of them, and it must cant over, fill, and glide from under them. Jane understood that Percy intended to float on the water near the shore, but he, proud to show a lovely woman how well he sculled, bent to his oars, and they were soon out on the blue waters of the bay. Then, shipping the oars, he fell into a deep reverie. Jane was seized with the most awful terror. There was no eye watching them, no boat within a mile, the shore was fast receding, the water deepening, and the Poet dreaming. She made several remarks, but they met with no response. Suddenly he raised his head, his face brightened as with a bright thought, and he exclaimed, joyfully, “Now let us together solve the great mystery!”