It is, and always has been, a point of honour for the officers to be among the very last to leave (except, of course, where their presence might be needed in the boats), and the captain to be the very last. Here, the captain was among the _first_ to scramble over the side; and his twelve-oared barge only took off twenty-eight persons, when it would have easily carried many more. A large barge took the colonial governor and his family, _and_ the governor’s trunks. His boat wanted for nothing, and would have accommodated ten or more persons than it took. When several of the unfortunate crew swam off and begged to be taken in, they were kept off with drawn swords. The raft(59) took the larger part of the soldiers, and had in all on board one hundred and fifty persons. The captain coolly proposed to desert some sixty of the people still on board, and leave them to shift for themselves; but an officer who threatened to shoot him was the means of making him change his mind, and over forty were taken off in the long-boat. Seventeen men, many of whom were helplessly intoxicated, were, however, left to their fate. On the morning of the 5th of July the signal was given to put to sea, and at first some of the boats towed the raft, which had no one to command it but a midshipman named Coudin, who, having a painful wound on his leg, was utterly useless. The other officers consulted their own personal safety only, and, with a few exceptions, this was the case with every one else. When the lieutenant of the long-boat, fearing that he could not keep the sea with eighty-eight men on board, and no oars, entreated three of the other boats, one after the other, to relieve him of a part of his living cargo, they refused utterly; and the officer of the third, in his hurry to run away, loosed from the raft. This was the signal for a general desertion. The word was passed from one boat to another to leave them to their fate, and the captain had not the manliness to protest. The purser of the _Medusa_, with a few others, opposed such a dastardly proceeding, but in vain; and the raft, without means of propulsion, was abandoned. As it proved afterwards, the boats, which all reached the land safely, sighted the coast the same evening; and the raft could have been towed to it in a day or two, or at all events sufficiently near for the purpose. The people on it could not at first believe in this treacherous desertion, and once and again buoyed themselves up with the hope that the boats would return or send relief. The lieutenant on the long-boat seems to have been one of the few officers possessing any spark of humanity and manliness. He kept his own boat near the raft for a time, in the hope that the others might be induced to return, but at length had to yield to the clamour of some eighty men on board with him, who insisted on his proceeding in search of land.