As soon as the Consuls had repaired damages they set sail from Heraclea for Africa, where they disembarked an army under Regulus; and most of the naval force, with the prisoners, then returned home. Regulus, however, soon suffered a defeat, and the Roman fleet had to be despatched to Africa again, in hot haste, to take off the scant remnant of his army. Before taking on board the defeated Legions the fleet had another great naval battle; and captured a Carthaginian fleet of one hundred and fourteen vessels. With the soldiers on board, and their prizes in tow, Marcus Emilius and Servius Fulvius, the Consuls then in command, determined to return to Rome by the south shore of Sicily. This was against the earnest remonstrances of the pilots, or sailing masters, “who wisely argued that, at the dangerous season when, the constellation of Orion being not quite past, and the Dog Star just ready to appear, it were far safer to go North about.” The Consuls, who had no idea of being advised by mere sailors, were unfortunately not to be shaken in their determination; and so, when Sicily was sighted, a course was shaped from Lylybeum to the promontory of Pachymus. The fleet had accomplished about two-thirds of this distance, and was just opposite a coast where there were no ports, and where the shore was high and rocky, when, with the going down of the sun, the north wind, which had been blowing steadily for several days, suddenly died away, and as the Romans were engaged in furling their flapping sails they observed that they were heavy and wet with the falling dew, the sure precursor of the terrible “Scirocco.” Then the pilots urged the Consuls to pull directly to the southward, that they might have sea room sufficient to prevent them from being driven on shore when the storm should burst upon them. But this, with the dread of the sea natural to men unaccustomed to contend with it, they refused to do; not comprehending that, although their quinqueremes were illy adapted to buffet the waves, anything was better than a lee shore, with no harbor of refuge.