With these events from March to June, there were intermingled throughout the world a hundred others which afterward I was to realize as significant. But they did not seem so at the time. An unusual volcanic activity was reported almost simultaneously from several different quarters. Etna burst forth with a cloud of steam; harmless; unexplained--a puzzle to the scientists. Fuji, so long dormant, began rumbling, threw Japan into a panic, flung up a cloud of smoke and gas which whitened into steam. The craters of the Hawaiians were everywhere steaming. The geysers of Western America were abnormally powerful in their action; the New Zealand hot springs were suddenly, unnaturally active. An earthquake occurred under the mid-Atlantic; a wave of tidal proportions inundated the coasts of Africa and the Americas. Scores of such reports following one upon the heels of the other from widely scattered localities indicated a general, unexplainable disturbance of nature. A wind storm out of season; rainfall in another quarter, unduly severe. Rivers were too high, or abnormally low. And the tides were wrong; countless small news dispatches, even back at the beginning of 1990, mentioned the surprising abnormality of local tides. * * * * * None of it was significant of anything; like a puzzle wherein one fits together odd pieces, with the key piece missing. The tides, they said--I quote the words of one popular newscaster of scientific matters: “The tides are all wrong. The moon must have become a lunatic. The astronomers had better look into the matter.” The tides, if one cared to summarize all the various conflicting reports, were everywhere disturbed; too high a flow; too low an ebb. Everywhere they were growing steadily lower. Harbors and channels were losing depth. Reefs and bars and harbor shoals, which last year were covered at high water, this year were never covered. High tides everywhere were not quite high enough, while low tides, all over the world, were breaking all previous records. By June there was much comment on this. Most of it, outside of shipping circles, was jocular. What of it? The age of air was upon us; who cared what the water was doing, except possibly the fishermen? Had there been no censorship, authentic scientific analysis of conditions would very soon have stopped all levity. It did stop, on July 18, when Dr. Plantet prevailed upon the world governments to make the matter fully public. That last voyage of mine in June was without incident, save one. It was witnessed only by myself and Arturo; one occurrence, most significant of all that had preceded it. Arturo had made half a dozen voyages with me. He loved the sea. He would have none of air travel, nor surface sailing; but the sub-sea seemed to hold a lure for him. Hours at a time he would sit by my elbow at the tower window, gazing forward into the glow of our headlight.