Across the bay, a cloud of strange size and shape rose from the mountain. Pliny the Elder, admiral of the Roman fleet and the greatest naturalist of his age, was reading in the sun. His seventeen-year-old nephew, Pliny the Younger, stayed behind to study, and years later wrote down everything he remembered: the cloud shaped like an umbrella pine, the letter begging for help, the ships launched. This is the hour before the admiral sailed. The words are imagined.