nel gale. By this you will see that Bougie must wait
until I call that way again. From the look of the sky, too, there is no
doubt we are in for a spell of the kind of weather I never expected to
meet in Africa. I was a stranger there, but I knew the language of
those squadrons of dark clouds driving into the bay.

The northern sky was full of their gloomy keels. There were intervals
when the full expanse of Bougie Bay became visible, with its concourse
of mountains crowded to the shore. At the base of the dark declivities
the combers were bursting, and the spume towered on the gale like grey
smoke. Out of the foam rose harsh rubble and screes to incline against
broken precipices, and those stark walls were interrupted by mid-air
slopes of grass which appeared ready to avalanche into the tumult
below, but remained, livid areas of a dim mass which rose into dizzy
pinnacles and domes, increasing the tumbling menace of the sky. A fleet
of clouds of deep draught ran into Africa from the north; went aground
on those crags, were wrecked and burst, their contents streaming from
them and hiding the aerial reef on which they had struck. The land
vanished, till only Bougie and its quay and the _Celestine_ remained,
with one last detached fragment of mountain high over us. That, too,
dissolved. There was only our steamer and the quay at last.

I thought our master would not dare to put out from there, but he cared
as little for the storm as for the steward. His last bales were no
sooner in the lighters than he made for Jidjelli. But Jidjelli daunted
even him. The nearer we got, the worse it looked. My own feeling was
that the gathering seas had taken charge of our scallop, a cork in the
surf, and were pitching her, helpless, towards terrible walls built of
night out of a base of thunder and bursting waters. I gripped a rail,
and saw a vague range of summits appear above the nearing walls and
steadily develop towards distinction. Then the howling gale began to
scream, the ceiling lowered and darkened, and merged with the rocks,
reducing the world but to our _Celestine_ in the midst of near flashes
of white in an uproar. When presently a little daylight came into chaos
to give it shape again, there was an inch of hail on our deck, and the
mountains had been changed to white marble. We saw a red light burn low
in the place where Jidjelli ought to be, a signal that it was
impossible to enter. Our skipper put about.

That is all I kn