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That officer hailed us at a distance, offering to take our family on board, adding, he was anxious to take about sixty people to the Desert. The officer of our boat, thinking that this was a pretence, replied, we preferred suffering where we were. It even appeared to us that M. Espiau had hid some of his people under the benches of the shallop.

The shallop, commanded by M. Espiau, ensign of the ship, took forty-five passengers, and put off. The boat, called the Senegal, took twenty-five; the pinnace thirty-three; and the yawl, the smallest of all the boats, took only ten.

Then the brave and generous M. Espiau, commander of the shallop, quitted the line of boats, and returned to the frigate, with the intention of saving all the wretches who had been abandoned. They all sprung into the shallop; but as it was very much overloaded, seventeen unfortunates preferred remaining on board, rather than expose themselves as well as their companions to certain death.

I succeeded in seizing some loaded muskets and threw them into the sea. When I was preparing to quit the frigate, I had contented myself with a small parcel of things which were indispensable; all the rest had been already pillaged. I had divided, with a comrade, eight hundred livres in gold, which I had still in my possession; this proved very fortunate for me in the sequel. Espiau.

M. Espiau earnestly besought the officers of the other boats to take some of them along with them; but they refused, alleging to the generous officer that he ought to keep them in his own boat, as he had gone for them himself. M. Espiau, finding it impossible to keep them all without exposing them to the utmost peril, steered right for a boat which I will not name.

M. Espiau, finding it impossible to keep them all without exposing them to the utmost peril, steered right for a boat which I will not name.

An hour after landing the sixty-three men, we perceived behind us four of our boats. Mr. Espiau, notwithstanding the cries of his crew who opposed it, lowered his sails and lay-to, in order to wait for them. "They have refused to take any people from us, let us do better now we are lightened, let us offer to take some from them."

The two sails were hoisted in order to strand more speedily upon the coast, every body reached the shore, the boat filled with water and was abandoned. This example, fatal to us, gave our sailors an inclination to do the same. Mr. Espiau consented to land them; he hoped to be able afterwards with the little water that remained, and by working the vessel ourselves, to reach the Senegal.

That officer hailed us at a distance, offering to take our family on board, adding, he was anxious to take about sixty people to the Desert. The officer of our boat, thinking that this was a pretence, replied, we preferred suffering where we were. It even appeared to us that M. Espiau had hid some of his people under the benches of the shallop.

Lieutenant Espiau, who commanded this large boat, was surprised at finding above sixty soldiers and sailors, instead of twenty. This officer went on board with Mr. Bredif, engineer of mines, who tried to recall to their reason, those whose intellectual faculties had been impaired by the presence of danger. Mr.