Page:Paine--Lost ships and lonely seas.djvu/102

72 tragedy of the sea the decision was held to be justifiable when the French Government investigated the circumstances.

With so few of them remaining, the fifteen survivors were able to assemble themselves upon a little platform raised in the center of the raft and to build a slight protection of plank and spars. To rehearse their sufferings at greater length would be to repel the modern reader. It is only in fiction that shipwreck can be employed as a theme for romance and enjoyable adventure. The reality is apt to be very stark and grim. It is more congenial to remember such fine bits as this, when the handful of them huddled upon the tiny platform in the final days of their agony:

It was the gallant M. Correard who assured his comrades that his presentiment of rescue was still unshaken, that a series of events so unheard of could not be destined to oblivion and that Providence would certainly preserve a few to tell to the world the melancholy story of the raft. In the bottom of a sack were found thirty cloves of garlic, which were