When he had completed this, he looked round at the state of the weather. The clouds had risen so fast that their edge was nearly overhead, spanning the sky like a great arch. Ahead of him it seemed almost as black as night. He had not been out in many of the gales that at times sweep the eastern waters of the Mediterranean with terrible violence, but had seen enough of them to know that it was no ordinary one that he was about to encounter. He looked over the bow; the spar at present was lying in contact with the stem. With an oar he pushed it across so as to be at right angles with the craft, and then, there being nothing else to do, sat down and waited for the storm to burst. In a short time he heard a dull moaning sound, a puff of wind struck the boat, but in a few seconds died out; it was sufficient to give the light craft stern way, and she drifted backwards, the rope tightening, until the spar lay across her bows, and some twenty yards away.