With so few of them remaining, the fifteen survivors were able to assemble themselves upon a little platform raised in the center of the raft and to build a slight protection of plank and spars. To rehearse their sufferings at greater length would be to repel the modern reader. It is only in fiction that shipwreck can be employed as a theme for romance and enjoyable adventure. The reality is apt to be very stark and grim. It is more congenial to remember such fine bits as this, when the handful of them huddled upon the tiny platform in the final days of their agony: On this new theatre we resolved to meet death in a manner becoming Frenchmen and with perfect resignation. Our time was almost wholly spent in talking of our beloved and unhappy country. All our wishes, our prayers, were for the prosperity of France. It was the gallant M. Correard who assured his comrades that his presentiment of rescue was still unshaken, that a series of events so unheard of could not be destined to oblivion and that Providence would certainly preserve a few to tell to the world the melancholy story of the raft. In the bottom of a sack were found thirty cloves of garlic, which were distributed as a precious alleviation, and there was rejoicing over a little bottle of tooth-wash containing cinnamon and aromatics. A drop of it on the tongue produced an agreeable feeling, and for a short time removed the thirst which destroyed us. Thus we sought with avidity an empty vial which one of us possessed and in which had once been some essence of roses. Every one, as he got hold of it, respired with delight the odor it exhaled, which imparted to his senses the most soothing impressions. Emaciated by privations, the slightest comfort was to us a supreme happiness. On the ninth day they saw a butterfly of a species familiar to the gardens of France, and it fluttered to rest upon the mast. It was a harbinger of land and an omen of deliverance in their wistful sight. Other butterflies visited them, but the winds and currents failed to set them in close to the coast, and there was never a glimpse of a sail. They existed in quietude, with no more brawls or mutinies, until sixteen days had passed since the wreck of the _Medusa_. Then a captain of infantry, scanning the sea with aching eyes, saw the distant gleam of canvas. Soon they were able to perceive that it was a brig, and they took it to be the _Argus_ of their own squadron, which they had been hoping would be sent in search of them. They made a flag out of fragments of clothing, and a seaman climbed to the top of the mast and waved it until his strength failed. The vessel grew larger through half an hour of tears and supplication, and then its course was suddenly altered, and it dropped below the sky-line.