The _Centaur_ was left on a lonely sea after the assistance of the crippled merchantmen had been courteously declined and the _Ville de Paris_ had so unaccountably sailed past. At night the flashes of guns were seen, the farewell messages of foundering ships, but through the long day there was never a sight of a sail. The _Centaur_ settled deeper and deeper until her lower decks were awash and it was foolish to pump and bale any longer. What was the use of trying to lift the Atlantic Ocean out of a ship that refused to stay afloat? It was not so much the fear of death as the realization of defeat that caused such a scene as this: “The people who, till this period, had labored as determined to conquer their difficulties, without a murmur, or without a tear, seeing their efforts useless, many of them burst into tears and wept like children.” There were boats for only a few of the large company, and such rafts as could be hastily put together would not have survived an hour in the seas that still ran high and menacing. By way of doing something, however, the carpenter’s gang swung out some spars and booms and began to lash them together. Captain Inglefield made mention of the behavior of the crew in this interesting reference, Some appeared perfectly resigned, went to their hammocks and desired their messmates to lash them in; others were securing themselves to gratings and small rafts; but the most predominant idea was that of putting on their best and cleanest clothes. This desire of making a decent appearance when in the presence of death is curiously frequent in the annals of the sea and may be called a characteristic trait of the sailor. At random two instances recur to mind. One of them happened aboard the United States frigate _Essex_ in the War of 1812, when Captain David Porter fought his great fight against the _Phoebe_ and the _Cherub_ and won glory in defeat. The decks of the _Essex_ were covered with dead and wounded, and more than half her crew had fallen when the starry ensign was hauled down. Then, as one of them told it when he returned home: “After the engagement, Benjamin Hazen, having dressed himself in a clean shirt and jerkin, told what messmates of his that were left that he could never submit to be taken as a prisoner by the English and leaped into the sea where he was drowned.” More than a hundred years later, in the Great War against Germany, an American yacht enrolled in the naval service was hunting submarines and convoying transports in the Bay of Biscay when a hurricane almost tore her to pieces. Deck-houses smashed, hold full of water, the yacht was not expected to survive the night. Then it was that a boatswain’s mate related: A guy of my division appeared on deck all dressed up in his liberty blues. The bos’n’s-mate asked him what he meant by turning out all dolled up like that. “Why, Jack,” answered this cheerful gob, “I have a date with a mermaid in Davy Jones’ locker.”