His interest keen, Captain Dillon went ashore with Martin Bushart, who interpreted for him, and they held a long conversation with the chiefs of Tucopia. Many years before, so the tale ran, two great ships had anchored among the islands of Manicola. Before they were able to send any boats ashore or to become acquainted with the natives, a very sudden storm arose, and both ships were driven upon the reefs and were destroyed by the fury of the surf. The people of Manicola rushed in crowds to the beach, armed with clubs, spears, and bows and arrows, and the sailors of the ships fired muskets and big guns at them. This infuriated the people, who killed some of the shipwrecked men when they were washed ashore or managed to make a landing in their boats. The survivors showed a friendly spirit and offered axes, buttons, and trinkets as gifts, at which the people ceased to attack them. The foreign sailors saved a large quantity of stores and other material from the wrecks, and at once began to build a small vessel from the timbers of the two shattered frigates. They worked with astonishing skill and speed, and built a schooner that was large enough to carry most of them away. The commander promised to return and bring off those whom he was compelled to leave behind. Crowded into this little makeshift craft, a large number of the officers and men of the lost _Boussole_ and _L’Astrolabe_ steered away from Manicola and were never heard of again. A second shipwreck swallowed them somewhere in the South Seas. It was impossible to ascertain whether La Pérouse himself was one of this company. Those who were left behind lived with the people of Manicola and were kindly treated by the chiefs. The Lascar had made two voyages to Manicola and had actually talked with two aged Europeans, who told him that they had been wrecked many years before in a ship, the fragments of which they pointed out to him. They told him that no other ship had ever stopped there since and that most of their companions were dead, but that they had been scattered so widely among the islands of the group that it was impossible to know whether any more of them were still living. By the Lascar’s reckoning, this would have been about thirty years after the disaster that overwhelmed the frigates of La Pérouse and, for all that is known, he himself may have been one of those aged men who dwelt so long beyond all knowledge of their countrymen in France and to whom the priceless gift of rescue was denied.