Trelawny, who had not got his port-clearance, tried to brazen it out. The officer of the Health Office threatened him with fourteen days’ quarantine. He proposed to go instantly and obtain the clearance papers, but Williams, fretting and fuming, would not hear another word. There was no more time to be lost. It was two o’clock already, and there was so little wind they would have great difficulty in reaching home before night. Between two and three o’clock the _Ariel_ sailed out of harbour almost at the same moment with two feluccas. Trelawny re-anchored sullenly, furled his sails, and with the ship’s glass watched the progress of their friends. His Genovese mate said to him, “They should have sailed this morning at three or four a.m. instead of three p.m. She is standing too much in-shore; the current will fix her there.” Trelawny replied, “She will soon have the land-breeze.” “Maybe she will soon have too much breeze,” remarked the mate. “That gaff top-sail is foolish in a boat with no deck and no sailor on board. . . . Look at those black lines and the dirty rags hanging on them out of the sky, look at the smoke on the water! The Devil is brewing mischief.” Standing on the end of the mole Captain Roberts also kept the boat in view. When he could see her no longer, he got leave to ascend the lighthouse-tower whence he could again discern her about ten miles out at sea. A storm was visibly coming from the Gulf, and he perceived that the _Ariel_ was taking in her top-sail. Then the haze of the storm hid her completely. In the harbour it was oppressively sultry. The heaviness of the atmosphere and an unwonted stillness benumbed the senses. Trelawny went to his cabin and fell asleep in spite of himself. He was aroused by noises overhead: the men were getting up a chain cable to let go another anchor. There was a general stir amongst the shipping, getting-down yards and masts, veering out cables, letting-go anchors. It was very dark. The sea looked as solid and smooth as a sheet of lead and was covered with an oily scum: gusts of wind swept over it without ruffling it, and big drops of rain fell on its surface rebounding as if they could not penetrate it. Fishing-craft under bare poles rushed by in shoals running foul of the ships in the harbour. But the din and hubbub made by men and their shrill pipings were suddenly silenced by the crashing voice of a thunder-squall that burst right overhead. When twenty minutes later the horizon was in some degree cleared, Trelawny and Roberts looked anxiously seaward in the hopes of descrying Shelley’s boat amongst the many small craft scattered about. No trace of her was to be seen. * * *