Captain de Chaumareys of the _Medusa_ was a light-hearted, agreeable shipmate, but he appears to have been a most indifferent seaman and a worse master of men and emergencies. When no more than ten days out from port he discovered that his reckoning had set him thirty leagues, or almost a hundred miles, out of his course. This was not enough to condemn him utterly, because navigation was a crude art a century ago and ships blundered about the high seas and found their way to port in the most astonishing manner. But Captain de Chaumareys was not made cautious by his error, and he drove along with fatuous confidence in his ability and would pay no heed to the opinions of his officers. He also managed to lose touch with the three smaller ships of the squadron, and they vanished from his ken. It was one fatal mischance after another. On the first of July, when the frigate crossed the tropic of Cancer, the debonair captain made it an excuse for a holiday and took personal charge of the gaieties which so absorbed him that he turned over the command of the ship to M. Richefort, one of the civilian officials who had seen naval service. There was a feeling of uneasiness on board, for all the fiddling and singing and dancing, and the officers discussed it over their wine in the ward-room and the passengers were aware of it in the cabins, “while the crew performed the fantastic ceremonies usual on such occasions although the frigate was surrounded by all the unseen perils of the ocean. A few persons, aware of the danger, remonstrated, but without effect, even when it was ascertained that the _Medusa_ was on the bank of Arguin.” The ship was, in fact, entrapped among the shoals and reefs which extended like a labyrinth far out from the African coast. It was an area of many disasters to stout ships, whose crews had been taken captive or killed by savage tribes, if they survived the hostility of the sea. M. Richefort, who was so obligingly acting as commander of the _Medusa_, insisted that there were a hundred fathoms of water under the keel and not the slightest cause for anxiety, and they still danced on deck to the scraping of the fiddles. With a crash that flung the merry-makers this way and that, and brought the spars tumbling about their ears, the _Medusa_ struck in only sixteen feet of water, and the deadly sands had inextricably gripped her. She was a lost ship on this bright day of calm seas and sunny weather and the sailors blithely tripping it heel-and-toe. It was soon realized that the frigate might pound to pieces in the first gale of wind, and that advantage had best be taken of the quiescent ocean to get away from her. The coast was known to be no more than forty miles distant, and the hope of escape was strong.