Perhaps as he moved so sedately in the ordered life of Boston and Hingham, or fared to the southward again as mate of a trading-schooner, he shivered at recollection of that day in Kingston when ten of his old shipmates of the _Mexican_ dangled from the gallows-tree and the populace crowded to enjoy the diverting spectacle. And in his dreams he may have heard the wailing voice of Pedro Nondre, when the rope broke and he fell to the ground alive: “Mercy! mercy! they kill me without cause! Oh, good Christians, protect me. Is there no Christian in this land? _Muero innocente! Adios, para siempre adios!_” A true tale this, every word of it, as are all the others in this book, but lacking one essential thing to make it complete. There is no mention in the diary of Captain Lincoln to bring us the comforting assurance that Bolidar, the swaggering lieutenant, and his diminutive blackguard of a chief received the solicitous attention of the hangman, as they handsomely deserved. CHAPTER III THE TRAGEDY OF THE FRIGATE _MEDUSA_ Among the countless episodes of disaster at sea, the fate of the French frigate _Medusa_ and her people still possesses a poignant and mournful distinction. Other ships have gone down with much greater loss of life, including such modern instances as the _Titanic_ and the _Lusitania_, or have been missing with all hands, but the story of the _Medusa_ casts a dark shadow across the chronicles of human suffering, even though a century has passed since the event. There are some enterprises which seem foredoomed to failure by a conspiracy of circumstances, as if a spell of evil enchantment had been woven to thwart and destroy them. Of such a kind was this most unhappy voyage. As an incident of the final overthrow of Napoleon, Great Britain returned to France the colonial territory of Sénégal on the west coast of Africa, between Cape Blanco and the Gambia River. A French expedition was equipped and sent out to reoccupy and govern the little settlements and clearings which thinly fringed the tropical wilderness. It included officials, scientists, soldiers, servants, and laborers, who sailed from Rochefort in the _Medusa_ frigate and three smaller vessels on the seventeenth of June, 1816. The French Navy had been shattered and swept from the seas by the broadsides of Nelson’s fleets, and its morale had ebbed. This mission, moreover, was not a strictly naval affair, and the personnel of the frigate was recruited with no particular care. The seamen were the scrapings of the waterfront, and the officers had not been selected for efficiency. They were typical neither of the French arms nor people. It seemed a commonplace task, no doubt, to sail with the summer breezes on a voyage not much farther than the Cape Verd Islands and disembark the passengers and cargo.