It was understood that the raft, with its burden of one hundred and fifty souls, was to be taken in tow by the five boats strung in a line, and this flotilla would make for the nearest coast, which might have been reached in two or three days of favoring weather. After a few hours of slow, but encouraging, progress, the tow-line of the captain’s boat parted. Instead of making fast to the raft again, all the other boats cast off their cables and, under sail and oar, set off to the eastward to save themselves. The miserable people who beheld this desertion denounced it as an act of cruelty and perfidy beyond belief. It may have been in the captain’s mind to make haste and send a vessel to pick up the castaways, but his previous behavior had been such that he scarcely deserves the benefit of the doubt. On the makeshift raft there were those who knew how to die like Frenchmen and gentlemen. What they endured has been handed down to us in the personal accounts of M. Correard and M. Savigny, colonial officials who wrote with that touch, vivid and dramatic, which is the gift of many of their race. Even in translation it is profoundly moving. When they saw the boats forsake them and vanish at the edge of the azure horizon, a stupor fell upon these unfortunate people as they clung to one another with arms locked and bodies pressed together so that they might not be washed off the raft. A small group in whom nobility of character burned like an unquenchable flame assumed the leadership, attempting to maintain some sort of discipline and decency, to ration the precious wine, to make the raft more seaworthy. One of the artisans had a pocket compass, which he displayed amid shouts of joy, but it slipped from his fingers and was lost. They had no chart or any other resource of the kind. “The first day passed in a manner sufficiently tranquil. We talked of the means by which we would save ourselves; we spoke of it as a certain circumstance, which reanimated our courage; and we sustained that of the soldiers by cherishing in them the hope of being able, in a short time, to revenge themselves on those who had abandoned them.... In the evening our hearts and our prayers, by a feeling natural to the unfortunate, were turned toward Heaven. Surrounded by inevitable dangers, we addressed that invisible Being who has established the order of the universe. Our vows were fervent and we experienced from our prayers the cheering influence of hope. It is necessary to have been in similar circumstances before one can rightly imagine what a solace to the hearts of the sufferers is the sublime idea of a God protecting the afflicted.”