but was turned back by the authorities because he had no
port-clearance. The air was sultry and still, with a storm
brewing, and he went down to his cabin and slept. When he
awoke, it was to see fishing-boats running into harbour under
bare poles amid the hubbub of a thunder-squall. In that squall
the 'Ariel' disappeared. It is doubtful whether the
unseaworthy craft was merely swamped, or whether, as there is
some reason to suppose, an Italian felucca ran her down with
intent to rob the Englishmen. In any case, the calamity is the
crowning example of that combination of bad management and bad
luck which dogged Shelley all his life. It was madness to
trust an open boat, manned only by the inexperienced Williams
and a boy (for Shelley was worse than useless), to the chances
of a Mediterranean storm. And destiny turns on trifles; if the
'Bolivar' had been allowed to sail, Trelawny might have saved
them.

He sent out search-parties, and on July 19th sealed the
despairing women's certainty of disaster by the news that the
bodies had been washed ashore. Shelley's was identified by a
copy of Sophocles in one coat-pocket and the Keats in another.
What Trelawny then did was an action of that perfect fitness to
which only the rarest natures are prompted: he charged himself
with the business of burning the bodies. This required some
organisation. There were official formalities to fulfil, and
the materials had to be assembled--the fuel, the improvised
furnace, the iron bars, salt and wine and oil to pour upon the
pyre. In his artless 'Records' he describes the last scene on
the seashore. Shelley's body was given to the flames on a day
of intense heat, when the islands lay hazy along the horizon,