Escaping this danger, and doubling Finisterre,
Captain Chaumareys outsailed his slow convoy,
as he had already expressed his wish and intention
of doing. The omens were adverse to the
Medusa from the beginning. The crew were
undisciplined, the captain careless, reckless, and
incompetent. A sailor-boy fell out of a porthole
and perished, in spite of the life-buoy thrown out
to him, from no gun being ready loaded to signal
the nearest vessel. The ship hove to, but too
late; the six-oared barge was lowered, with only
three men to pull it, and the boy sank. Touching
at Teneriffe, to procure wine and oranges,
Captain Chaumareys kept his subsequent course
dangerously near the coast of the island. On
the 29th of June there was another bad omen.
Two nights running the frigate caught fire
between decks, owing to the gross carelessness of
the head baker. Early on the morning of the
10th of July, when off Cape Bayados, the Medusa
passed the equator. Old Neptune, of course,
instantly hailed the luckless vessel and came on
board, and the ceremony of rough shaving and
the paying of fines was performed amid wild
laughing and buffoon dancing. Captain Chaumareys
presided at this noisy buffoonery, and
literally throwing the reins on the horses' neck,
he let the vessel go almost where it pleased.

At the very height of this saturnalia the
officer in command changed the vessel's course,
and informed the captain that the Medusa was
bearing in upon a reef of enormous rocks, on
which the sea, only half a cannon-shot off, could
indeed be seen breaking fiercely. More
mismanagement that night. The Echo fired two
guns and hung out a lantern at her mizen, but
the signals were never properly answered. The
Medusa had taken a dangerous course—she had
gone inside the Canary Islands. She should
rather have gone outside, taken a long sweep
round, like a carriage when it prepares for turning
a corner, and then borne down suddenly
straight on Senegal.

There was now great and palpable danger.
Every two hours the frigate was brought to, in
order to sound; every half-hour the lead was
heaved—still always shallows. At last, the
water deepening to a hundred fathoms, the
captain stood again to the S.S.E., and bore towards
the African shore.

The minister of marine's direction to Captain
Chaumareys had been imperative not to
trust to the charts, but to make W.S.W.
instantly after sighting Cape Blanco. On the
evening of the 1st of July some of the officers
thought they saw the wished-for cape. About
six o'clock the captain was called up and shown
a bank of mist, which he was easily persuaded was
actually the cape. The officers, indeed, thinking
the cape had been passed in the night, wished
to persuade him that he had obeyed instructions.
The great and dreaded reef of Arguin,
thirty leagues broad, was ahead; the way to steer
now was W.S.W., then turning south to Senegal.
The captain, blindly trusting himself to a
M. Richefort, an ex-naval officer who had just
returned from ten years in an English prison, and
who had once known something of the African
seas, resisted all interference, ignored the reef,
and at once steered south for Portendie. In
vain a young Swiss surgeon, M. Savigny, who
had studied Alpine vapours, assured the captain
that what he saw was only cloud; while M.
Picard, a notary of Senegal, who eight years
before had struck on the Arguin reef, also
declared that the Medusa was rushing into the
very jaws of death.

The evil omens came faster and faster to the
wilful man; but all in vain. He was doomed
and so was the ship. M. Lapérère, the officer of
the morning watch, was disregarded when he
found by his reckoning, as well as by soundings,
that the ship was very near a reef; and M.
Maudet, who succeeded him, when he took the
sun's altitude grew very grave, and told M.
Richefort, the ignorant, and self-appointed pilot
that the reef was then quite close. The captain's
adviser merely replied, "Oh, never mind; we're
still in eighty fathoms."

M. Maudet sounded; the water grew thicker
and browner, fish were numerous, and seaweed
floated by in green drifts. Presently the lead
showed eighteen fathoms. The captain, in a
flurried way, instantly ordered the studding-sail
to be taken in, to bring the ship a little more to
the wind; the lead then showed only six fathoms
—a terribly rapid decrease. "Haul her closer
to the wind." Too late. There was hope,
with promptitude, at eighteen fathoms, but
now none. The tide, too, was at its highest,
and would, in a few minutes, begin to decline.
A few seconds more and the startled ship
luffed, gave a heel, went on, heeled again and
again, and stopped. The Medusa, at a quarter-past
three on the 2nd of July, struck on the
west edge of the dreaded Arguin reef, off the
great African desert, nineteen degrees thirty-six
minutes north latitude, nineteen degrees forty-five
minutes west longitude.

The ill-disciplined crew fell into a despair as
instantaneous as it was cowardly and unworthy.
Two ladies, Madame and Mademoiselle Chemals,
wife and daughter of the governor, alone
remained calm and unmoved, while veterans of
Napoleon, and old sailors tried in a thousand
storms, screamed and shrieked like terrified
madmen; others remained as if paralysed,
thunderstruck, or chained to the deck, hopeless,
speechless, powerless. Every countenance
changed; the features of many absolutely
shrank and grew hideously contracted and
deformed till the first stupefaction of
instantaneous and overwhelming terror passed away.
The Frenchmen broke into wailing or into
curses at the pseudo-pilot; and an officer who
came upon deck said to the cause of this
misfortune:

"See, monsieur, what your obstinacy has
done. You know I warned you."

All that day the sailors worked with the fury
of despair. The sails were lowered, the
top-gallant-mast taken down, and everything
prepared to get the Medusa off the reef. The next
day the topmasts were taken off and the