. Common suffering, instead of softening, hardened the hearts
of the survivors against each other. Some of them drank wine till they
were in a frenzy of intoxication, and attempted to cut the ropes which
kept the raft together. A general fight ensued, many were killed, and
many were cast into the sea during the struggle; and thus perished
from sixty to sixty-five. On the third day portions of the bodies of
the dead were devoured by some of the survivors. On the fourth night
another quarrel and another fight, with more bloodshed, broke out. On
the fifth morning, thirty only out of the one hundred and fifty were
alive. Two of these were flung to the waves for stealing wine: a boy
died, and twenty-seven remained, not to comfort and to assist each
other, but to hold a council of destruction, and to determine who
should be victims for the preservation of the rest. At this hideous
council twelve were pronounced too weak to outlive much more
suffering, and that they might not needlessly consume any part of the
remaining stock of provisions, such as it was, (flying fish mixed with
human flesh.) these twelve helpless wretches were deliberately thrown
into the sea. The _fifteen_, who thus provided for their own safety by
the sacrifice of their weaker comrades, were rescued on the
seventeenth day after the wreck by a brig, sent out in quest of the
wreck of the Medusa by the six boats, which reached the shore in
safety, and which might have been the means of saving all on the raft,
had not the crews been totally lost to every sentiment of generosity
and humanity, when they cast off the tow-lines.

In fact, from the very first of the calamity which befel the Medusa,
discipline, presence of mind, and every generous feeling, were at an
end: and the abandonment of the ship and of the raft, the terrible
loss of Life, the cannibalism, the cruelty, the sufferings, and all
the disgraceful and inhuman proceedings, which have branded the modern
Medusa with a name of infamy worse than that of the Gorgon,--the
monster after which she was called,--originated in the want of that
order and prompt obedience, which the pages of this volume are
intended to record, to the honour of British seamen.

In the history of no less than forty shipwrecks narrated in this
memorial of naval heroism,--of passive heroism, the most difficult to
be exercised of all sorts of heroism,--there are very few instances of
misconduct, and none resembling that on board the