y condition.--'Have you a pigeon to carry your
orders with such celerity?' The cries and the confusion soon roused us
from this languor; but when tranquility was somewhat restored, we
again fell into the same drowsy condition. On the morrow, we felt as
if we had awoke from a painful dream, and asked our companions, if,
during their sleep, they had not seen combats and heard cries of
despair. Some replied, that the same visions had continually tormented
them, and that they were exhausted with fatigue. Every one believed he
was deceived by the illusions of a horrible dream.

After these different combats, overcome with toil, with want of food
and sleep, we laid ourselves down and reposed till the morrow dawned,
and showed us the horror of the scene. A great number in their
delirium had thrown themselves into the sea. We found that sixty or
sixty-five had perished during the night. A fourth part at least, we
supposed, had drowned themselves in despair. We only lost two of our
own numbers, neither of whom were officers. The deepest dejection was
painted on every face; each, having recovered himself, could now feel
the horrors of his situation; and some of us, shedding tears of
despair, bitterly deplored the rigor of our fate.

A new misfortune was now revealed to us. During the tumult, the rebels
had thrown into the sea two barrels of wine, and the only two casks of
water which we had upon the raft. Two casks of wine had been consumed
the day before, and only one was left. We were more than sixty in
number, and we were obliged to put ourselves on half rations.

At break of day, the sea calmed, which permitted us again to erect our
mast. When it was replaced, we made a distribution of wine. The
unhappy soldiers murmured and blamed us for privations which we
equally endured with them. They fell exhausted. We had taken nothing
for forty-eight hours, and we had been obliged to struggle continually
against a strong sea. We could, like them, hardly support ourselves;
courage alone made us still act. We resolved to employ every possible
means to catch fish, and, collecting all the hooks and eyes from the
soldiers, made fish-hooks of them but all was of no avail. The
currents carried our lines under the raft, where they got entangled.
We bent a bayonet to catch sharks, one bit at it, and straitened it,
and we abandoned our project. Something was absolutely necessary to
sustain our miserable existence, and we tremble with horror a