This day was serene and the ocean slumbered. Our hearts were in harmony with the comforting aspect of the heavens and received anew a ray of hope. A shoal of flying fish passed under our raft and as there was an infinite number of openings between the pieces which composed it, the fish were entangled in great numbers. We threw ourselves upon them and took about two hundred and put them in an empty barrel. This food seemed delicious, but one man would have required a score. Our first emotion was to give thanks to God for this unhoped for favor. An ounce of gunpowder was discovered, and the sunshine dried it, so that with a steel and gun-flints a fire was kindled in a wetted cask and some of the little fish were cooked. This was the only food vouchsafed them, a mere shadow of substance among so many, “but the night was made tolerable and might have been happy if it had not been signalized by a new massacre.” A mob of Spaniards, Italians, and negroes had hatched a plot to throw all the others into the sea and so obtain the raft and what wine was left. The black men argued that the coast was near and that they could traverse it without danger from the natives and so act as guides. The leader of this outbreak was a Spaniard, who placed himself behind the mast, made the sign of the cross with one hand, waved a knife in the other, and invoked the name of God as the signal to rush forward and begin the affray. Two faithful French sailors, who were forewarned of this eruption, lost not a moment in grappling with this devout desperado, and he was thrown into the sea along with an Asiatic of gigantic stature who was suspected of being another ringleader. A third instigator of the mob, perceiving that the plot was discovered, armed himself with a boarding-ax, hacked his way free, and plunged into the ocean. The rest of the mutineers were hardier lunatics, and they fought wildly in the attempt to kill one of the officers, under the delusion that he was a Lieutenant Danglass, whom they had hated for his harsh manners while aboard the _Medusa_. At length they were repulsed, but when the morning came only thirty persons remained alive of the one hundred and fifty who had left the frigate. Occasional glimpses of reason prevailed, as when two soldiers were caught in the act of stealing wine from the only cask left, and were put to death after a summary courtmartial conducted with singular regard for form and ceremony. Among those who mercifully passed out at the end of a week was the twelve-year-old sailor-boy, whose name was Leon. M. Savigny describes it so tenderly that the passage is worth quoting: