As the overloaded longboat was unable to aid the raft, let alone rescue those on board, she too pulled away to the east. Within four hours land was sighted. At three p.m. on July 5, as he made his diary entry, Brédif recorded that “all is well, the weather is good and there’s hope of saving our lives.” With nearly ninety people straining the frail craft well beyond its capacity, this observation exhibited a laudable optimism that was soon put to the test. In the early evening the longboat struck bottom. The night came down, closing in with thick mist, and it was not until nine p.m. that the sailors disengaged their craft. Off the shoal, all on board received a small quantity of water and a biscuit, their third distribution of rations since leaving the Medusa that morning.
Steadily the wind had been strengthening, blowing off the mist and whipping up a storm. Crouched down in the cramped longboat, his earlier confidence undermined, Brédif described it as a “night of distress and fear” as wave after wave threatened to engulf and drown them. But they survived the turbulent night. As day broke under a fresh wind on a heavy sea, they struggled eastward using their drenched bodies as a shield against the overwhelming waves.
With the coastline once again visible, the majority of those aboard decided to take their chances on the dry, inhospitable land rather than risk uncertain navigation in a sinking longboat. Lieutenant Espiaux thus put ashore fifty-seven people at Cap Mirick on the southern point of the Arguin Bank. Lieutenant de Praviel was among those who went ashore to contend with the blistering heat on a desert march of over two hundred miles south to Saint-Louis in Senegal.
Lieutenant Espiaux, along with Brédif and the twenty-six others left on board, put out to sea.1 About an hour later they sighted some of the other boats from the Medusa. Espiaux, always thinking of how best to manage things, hailed them, offering to take people on board in return for water. Incredibly, he was refused. Nobody on the other boats believed his story about the landing. How would men be so crazy as to elect to march through the desert to a likely death from dehydration, or into captivity and enslavement by the Moors? Suspicious, the occupants of the other boats believed Espiaux’s band to be concealed under the seats, ready to surprise them and steal their rations. While such distrust was undermining all sensible attempts to coordinate the rescue, the small skiff was beginning to break up and fifteen passengers, including Rabaroust, were taken on board by Espiaux.
Toward evening the weather deteriorated once again and Brédif, facing another stormy night, impassively awaited his fate. Hanging his head over the side of the longboat he succumbed to a much needed sleep. The roar and splatter of the waves smacking against the hull provoked a dream about a pure alpine torrent to which the parched victim was running in order to plunge his head under its freshwater spray and quench his thirst. In the manner of such dreams he never achieved his goal, but rather woke to find his lips stuck together by a crust of salt, his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth, and his soul possessed by the most terrible desire to end his nightmare by throwing himself into the sea.
By midday on July 7 the temperature was unbearable. Brédif wanted to dangle his feet in the sea to cool them, but as sharks had been sighted he did not dare. Portions of the coast they followed were, from time to time obscured by thick red sandstorms, which blew out over the sea, dusting them and leaving a boatload of terra-cotta bodies immobile in the oven-hot afternoon. Drinkable liquid was already scarce as some unruly sailors had already downed the several bottles of Madeira that were on board, so everybody sucked on little balls of lead to keep their saliva circulating.
That afternoon they sighted the Senegal boat. After the breakup of the convoy, this craft, under the command of Ensign Maudet, soon lost sight of the others. During the first stormy night she was tossed about wildly, up onto the crests of immense waves and then, stomach scoopingly, plunged into chasms over which giant arcs of water reached to engulf her.
When on the afternoon of July 7 those in Maudet’s Senegal boat were scared by the sight of what they took to be Moorish pirates, they were relieved to discover that it was, in fact, the Medusas longboat. Their only rations, a small cask of wine, had been lost overboard by a sailor scared out of his wits by the high waves. They were thus deeply grateful to Lieutenant Espiaux when he handed them two bottles of brandy.
About six o’clock they discerned a group of Moors on the beach, mending their fishing nets. Frightened by the sight of two strange boats, the fishermen went off on their camels. At this, two brave—or desperate—men decided to take their chances with the breakers and swim ashore to see what food they could scavenge. Successful, they feasted on the dried fish and fresh water left behind by the Moors and then struggled back to the boats.
The following morning, Maudet’s Senegal boat was carried toward the coast where she was swept into the breakers that threw her up on the beach. People scrambled onto the sand and scattered to search for fresh water. Observing this, the sailors aboard the longboat angrily pressed Espiaux to go ashore. A sail was hoisted and the longboat likewise sped into the breakers and crested up onto the sand, where she beached, plunging people overboard into the waves. Brédif found his diary notes miraculously intact, and returned to the longboat, several times, to stuff his pockets with sodden, saltwatery biscuits. Back on the hot sand he found a group of sailors broaching the only remaining barrel of water. Fighting through the desperate group, he wrestled to get his mouth on the bunghole, managing only a couple of gulps before it was torn away—two swigs worth two gallons to a body that, for three days, had taken in dangerously little liquid.2
Staggering from a phantom pitch and roll, the legacy of three weeks at sea, the castaways from Espiaux’s longboat joined the crew and passengers of Maudet’s Senegal boat. Some drenched, others already covered with sand and without shoes, they could hardly recognize one another, standing in the odd scraps of clothing they had managed to snatch from the frigate before or during the evacuation. This sorry, ragtag band began to move south along the coast and had walked for only about half an hour when they saw the pinnace speeding toward shore.
Under Ensign Lapeyrère, the pinnace had kept in convoy with the captain’s and governor’s barges as they descended the coast. Both Schmaltz and Chaumareys had insisted that they sail straight for Senegal, and there had followed a lively exchange in which the dearth of supplies on board the pinnace, the need to make for land, and their obligation to return to save those on the raft and still on board the Medusa proved useless arguments against the egotism of the governor and the commander. If the plan to proceed to Senegal by sea was to be respected, the pinnace, needed to take on some of the excess of supplies provisioning the barges. Chaumareys, between great gulps of wine, which he swigged from a huge demijohn, nonchalantly informed Lapeyrère that they didn’t have sufficient supplies for themselves. At length, the leaders of the expedition forbade the pinnace from making a landing, reiterating their wish to make for Senegal by sea, and to that end they dropped anchor for the night.
By six a.m. on July 6, when the convoy once again got under way, several sailors demanded to be put ashore. Entreaties flared into threats and it was only the firmness of Ensign Lapeyrère that quelled a mutiny on board the pinnace.
By midday they were blinded by the hot particles of sand blown out to sea by infernal desert winds, coloring the sun a hellish red and coating the insides of their mouths with the grit-filled air. In the late afternoon a northwesterly breeze cleared this storm and with a second meal—a little glass of water and a soggy biscuit—spirits rose. But the breeze freshened to a wind and throughout the night, waves threatened to submerge them, washing overboard one of their sails and those few effects that several people had managed to sneak on board. A large hole opened in the stern through which water was pouring into the boat. Trousers, sleeves of shirts, strips of dresses, shawls, hats—everything available was used to plug it. As the sea rose with its white foam tracing deep black chasms, Picard broke down and started to cry with fear for the safety of his family. Wanting to suckle her baby, his wife found that her milk had dried for want of nourishment.
The compass broke during the night and the boat meandered first to port and then to starboard until the first streaks of morning light gave them their bearings. Land was sighted and the sailors, once again, agitated to be put ashore. This time, with the craft deteriorating rapidly, Lapeyrère agreed to navigate the pinnace toward the beach, at which point, whoever wanted to could plunge into the waves and swim ashore. In the attempt, faced by the size of the breakers, the eleven men who had insisted thought the better of it. Pulling away from the shore, they received their third distribution of food since leaving the Medusa. With only four pints of water and a dozen sodden biscuits left on board, the question of putting ashore in search of sustenance was being seriously debated when the sight of a caravan of Moors dissuaded them. Lapeyrère now thought it best to continue by sea, reckoning that they would reach Senegal the following day.
The sun set the air ablaze and people, in desperation, capitulated to the dangerous urge to drink seawater. To alleviate desiccation, some started to consume their urine, cooling it first in the sea. The youngest Picards cried incessantly and little Laure, aged six, lay on the verge of death at her mother’s feet. Devastated by this sight, Picard pulled out his knife. Staring at his daughter, he brought the blade down purposefully onto his arm. He was on the point of slitting a vein so that his blood might serve to assuage the thirst of his child when he was stopped.3
The freshness of the evening offered some respite and the pinnace anchored a little distance offshore while people slept. Ravenous as dawn broke on July 8, stranded without even a whisper of wind on a dead sea, they tried to row in the direction of Senegal but were too weak to make any headway. A fourth and final distribution of food was a mockery; six waterlogged biscuits and four pints of water were eked out among the forty-two people on board. Again, Moors appeared on the shore and the boat distanced itself a little until someone noticed a small troop of men standing on a hillock, gesticulating wildly. Recognizing them as castaways from the Medusa, they hoisted a white handkerchief by way of acknowledgment and decided to make every effort to reach the shore.
Rolled and tossed by the surf, the pinnace sped toward the coast. When the helmsman misjudged the crest of a wave the boat was all but capsized. So an older, more experienced pilot took over and ordered the mast and sails to be thrown into the sea. Having successfully navigated the boat through the storm, he took charge in order to get the frightened passengers safely ashore. A towering wave remained between them and the beach. As the boat angled to ride the crest, she lurched, plunged into the wave, which swallowed and rolled her over, splintering oars and ramming the vortex of debris up onto the sand, where it was battered by successive breakers. Sailors tried to hook the grapple anchor in order to secure their landfall as others threw themselves into the surf to rescue the children. Engineer Brédif pelted down the beach and into the waves to help save the Picard ladies and, after a few moments of hectic effort and confusion, Charlotte Picard found herself standing on the firm sand beside her mother-in-law and her half-dead brothers and sisters.4
The castaways found themselves on a scorching shore under a lacerating July sun without water, without food, and with many of the exhausted and famished party nearly naked. The immense expanse of undulating sand that stretched before them appeared every bit as daunting as the heaving sea.5 All the warnings given in published accounts about the dangers of sailing the African coast had not saved them from shipwreck, and all the stories of the menacing desert could only have raised their apprehensions about a region where the Moors viewed all ships and boats thrown up on their coasts as gifts to them from the heavens.6 Whatever practical difficulties the castaways faced, their perceptions, molded by ignorance, prejudice, and limited experience, prepared them for the worst; over and above their desperate physical situation, they anticipated the perils of enslavement and, worse still, cannibalism.
History provided examples of expedient cannibalism and cautionary tales made use of it as a symbolic punishment, but only since the days of the great European explorers had cannibalism appeared as a real threat.7 The subject of cannibalism had thus come to fascinate and terrorize the so-called civilized world. Published in London by Henry Colburn, who was to produce the English edition of Savigny and Corréard’s best-selling account of the Medusa saga, a book by the German doctor and explorer George Heinrich von Langsdorff provided a kind of traveler’s “good food guide” to the human species.
Incredible as it may appear, there have been, and are still, particularly in South America, and in the interior of Africa, as well as upon its western coasts, people who feed upon human flesh merely on account of its delicacy, and as the height of gourmandise. These nations not only eat the prisoners they take in war, but their own wives and children; they even buy and sell human flesh publicly. To them we are indebted for the information that white men are finer flavoured than Negroes, and that Englishmen are preferable to Frenchmen. Farther, the flesh of young girls and women, particularly of new-born children, far exceeds in delicacy that of the finest youths or grown men. Finally they tell us that the inside of the hand and the sole of the foot are the nicest parts of the human body.8
Charles Cochelet, shipwrecked on the West African coast in 1819, described some indigenous figures as barely human, writing that “I should have looked upon them as apes of the most frightful species, had not their bodies, which no clothing concealed, possessed the human form.”9 So widespread were such reactions and their attendant fantasies of cannibalism that Joseph de Grandpré had, in 1801, set out to dispel “the disgusting absurdity” that “the Congo is governed by a King who feeds on human flesh. “Grandpré claimed that Africans were not cannibals and that it was, ironically, on board European slave ships, chained and clapped in irons and watching the sailors drinking bloodred wine and dark, dried meat, that the fear of cannibalism gripped the minds of the captured Africans being so inhumanely transported. They agonized that they would soon be served to their rapacious captors.10
Whatever hardships the castaways from the Medusa confronted, they would encounter no cannibals among the indigenous people they met during their arduous march to Saint-Louis. However, the far more real fear of captivity was ever present to the almost defenseless and severely weakened troop of eighty-six people that came ashore near the deserted trading post at Portendick, about halfway between where the Medusa ran aground and their destination in Senegal. There were many stories about the savage treatment of shipwreck survivors at the hands of Moorish slavers. In 1814, Geoffroy de Villeneuve had documented a particularly ferocious tribe, the Azounas, who wandered between Cap Bojador and the Senegal River, plundering whatever they could find either from shipwrecked boats or, farther south, from black villages along the river. They were armed, hated, and enslaved their captives.11
As the clothes of the castaways were in tatters, and fearing that the women may be at greater risk, several gallant officers proposed their uniforms to the Picard ladies. Charlotte inexplicably declined, keeping her torn dress, which, she would soon discover, afforded her legs little protection against the prickly shrubs that punctured the desert sands.
They were, at once, forced to abandon a man whose legs had been smashed coming ashore; they laid him out on the sand to almost certain lengthy and painful death and set off into the desert to look for fresh water. Their saliva sticky and tongues furred, they eventually found clumps of foul-smelling and thorny vegetation and they started to dig, crazily pawing and scraping at the sand like dogs. Down they dug into the claylike earth to a depth of two or three feet until they discovered a whitish, stinking liquid, which Brédif dared to sample. Finding it to be saltless, he called out that they were saved. Several other holes were dug at once and the parched survivors gorged themselves on more of the stomach-turning water.
After slaking their thirst, some people set about gathering bunches of purslane, an herb that had been known in the Middle Ages as an antiaphrodisiac. Although reputed to “mitigate great heat in all the inward parts of man,” it was unlikely to have afforded protection against the blistering swelter of the desert sun. However, it did help to keep the famished troops alive. The drenched ship’s biscuit had by now dried hard as stone; they tried to eat it but it stayed solidified in their mouths until they spat it out.12
The group rested for another hour before setting off in a southerly direction with the women and children in the front of the party and Brédif carrying one of the youngest on his shoulders in the hope of inspiring the sailors to do the same. For those still shod, the fine, burning sand poured into their shoes and boots as their feet sank inches deep, making each step impossibly hot and heavy.
With the arid, sand-filled air caking their eyelids and firing their throats, they were happy once again to cross the dunes that gave way to the sea’s edge. The wet sand soothed them as they stopped to rest. They drank a little of the sulfurous water that they had carried with them from their first stop, and as the sun fell the temperature cooled. It was obviously less arduous to travel after sundown, in the early morning, or at night, but it was then that they felt more vulnerable, easy prey for the fierce tribes and wild animals that haunted the coast.
On the first night ashore, after their rest with sentries posted to guard against marauders, the bedraggled band began their journey again at three a.m. Those without shoes were stabbed and cut by the shells strewn along the beach. They halted every half hour at Picard’s behest; his intense anxiety for the weaker members of his family made his attitude somewhat imperious and, in his wearied state, he lacked sufficient reserves to manifest his gratitude for these rests. Two officers, believing that only drive and determination would get them to their goal, grumbled that the family was dangerously slowing their progress. Picard immediately sprang to the defense of his kin who were, unfortunately, at that moment straggling at the rear. With nerves frayed by fatigue, bodies tested by the extremes of climate, and with the question of their survival at stake, the argument grew fierce and swords were drawn. The older members of the family, shocked once more by the selfishness that had spread through the ill-fated expedition like an epidemic, pleaded with their father to stay with them in the desert rather than travel on with people they judged more barbarous than the dreaded Moors. Captain Baignères, a leader of one of the companies of the Africa Battalion, intervened, shaming those who wished to abandon the family with notions of honor and duty and discourses on what it meant to be French, a quality that had been aired and tested and rolled uncertainly around in the minds of many of the Medusa victims.
As the day declared itself, burning off the dawn chill, they searched behind the nearest dunes for more edible plants. A green creeper strung across the sand was found to be bitter. Other plants were identified as poisonous. So further quantities of purslane were gathered and devoured ravenously. One plant, milkweed, with its silky white plumes, played havoc with perception. Waving in the distance, it looked to several people like clumps of Moorish tents. Determined to find fresh water even at the cost of enslavement, they started to stagger off in that direction only to realize that it was a mirage. Others saw distant pools or wide, rapid-flowing rivers and hastened to reach what their stricken minds were swiftly forced to accept as a trick of the dazzling sun rebounding off the white, burning sand.
The naturalist Kummer, one of the delegates of the Philanthropic Society, recklessly decided to leave the group and strike off into the burning interior of the Sahara in search of Moors who might feed him. Two days later, his friend Rogery, also a delegate of the company and an ex-infantry officer, would suddenly and secretly leave the band in order to trace a parallel path deep into the desert.
Again wells were dug, yielding the now familiar fetid liquid with which the castaways refreshed their sand-choked mouths and moistened their cracking lips. At first, this strange and arid environment had seemed a sea of silence after the ocean’s incessant roar, but slowly the group adjusted to the desert’s sounds: the grating of the fine crystals against their bodies and their clothes, the whispering as the wind chivvied the sand into little rills, the moaning and the growling of a storm.
After their rest, they set off back over the blazing dunes to the succor of a fresher, harder surface that had been cooled and compacted by the action of the waves. Such zigzagging was adding distance to their journey but it was necessary and they gratefully lay down in the water and caught some large crabs, which gave them sustenance as well as moisture as they sucked on the claws.
On the night of July 9, when the weary group halted between dunes, they heard the sounds of what they thought were leopards and they decided to spend a good part of the threatening night bunched in the safety of a tight group. When someone thought he spotted a lion, people roused themselves to take a look. After staring intently into the desert for some time, they realized that the lion swayed but didn’t move and that it was nothing but the moonlight playing tricks with the ruffled milkweed.
Despite the risk of wild animals, they moved off long before dawn. At about six a.m., they had their first encounter with human predators, a small bunch of pillagers who seemed content to rob some of the stragglers and then ride off. Several men had been hatching a plot to kill the officers in order to seize the gold they vainly imagined them to be carrying; others fantasized about robbing everybody and running off to become marauders. Slowly the sun’s disabling heat burned off these thoughts, as parched and swollen-footed, these would-be renegades stumbled along with the rest of the tattered band. At length, they sighted and approached a humble camp of shabby tents. Gaspar Mollien observed that the Moorish women inhabiting the camp, with their stick legs, sunken torsos, and withered breasts, were hardly less alarming in appearance than the wizened castaways themselves. This second meeting with the feared Moors proved a little expensive but not dangerous. The black servant of one of the officers acted as an interpreter and the women sold them goat’s milk, fresh water, and millet. Picard purchased two kids from them to feed the group, but unable to wait for the animals to be cooked the sailors tore off half-raw morsels, which they devoured, leaving hardly any meat for the officers.
While Picard was busily seeking contributions toward the cost of the animals—being denied only by Richefort—suddenly, out of nowhere, a small band of blacks and Moors charged the group. Grabbing their rifles, several soldiers ranked in formation as if to defend the castaways from the sudden assault. When the assailants abruptly halted without attack, two officers and the interpreter, covered by several soldiers, went to speak to them. What had appeared as menace proved to be nothing more than commercial enthusiasm as the would-be attackers offered their services as guides to Senegal, suggesting that they set off at once.13
As they traversed the spiky shrub-covered dunes, Charlotte Picard’s feet and legs were scratched till they bled and her dress was snagged and torn. She struggled to keep up as the guides led them to their camp. When at last they arrived, exhausted, they were not welcomed but viciously taunted by a horde of women and children who swarmed around them, showering the sorry visitors with sand. Dogs snapped at their raw and blistered shins. The women pinched them, tugging at their hair to inspect it, ripping all the shiny buttons and braid from the uniforms, and spitting with delight into the faces of the frightened Europeans. After what seemed like an interminable barrage of abuse, the guides shooed off the vicious gang so that water could be distributed, and dried or rotten fish and bitter milk sold to the castaways.
“Hey, Picard, don’t you recognize me? It’s Ahmet.”
The sound of French tumbling from the mouth of a large young figure swathed in Arab costume startled the hungry band and Picard turned to find himself greeted by a goldsmith whom he had employed on one of his previous trips to Senegal. Apalled by their wretched state, Ahmet arranged for more milk and water to be distributed without charge. As the weather was turning, he also set about constructing a tent of skins to shield the Picards; forbidden by his religion to lodge Christians in his own house, he was anxious that the family of his old employer should be protected against the ravages of a desert storm. Lighting large fires to comfort the frightened Europeans, Ahmet and his fellow tribesmen bid good night, assuring them that the Christian God is also that of the Muslims.
By midnight the weather had improved, so they decided to set off with the Picard women and children balanced precariously on donkeys. They now rested every quarter of an hour, fueling resentment against the Picards as such frequent stops were thought to risk the safety of the group at large.
Brédif began to experience extreme fatigue in the early hours and felt so comatose that he nearly slept as he walked. Happy to hear the command “Halt,” he collapsed onto the sand, dreading the moment that came after all too short a time when they were urged up and on their way. During one such interlude, Brédif fell into a particularly profound sleep and failed to hear the command to move on. Consigned to captivity or certain death, he lay asleep, unobserved as his compatriots moved off. Only by chance was he spotted by a man at the back of the caravan, who returned to revive him.
On their strange, snaking journey, the frayed group reached the coast once again at dawn. The donkeys, after their labors in the shifting sands, became so excited to set their hooves on the firm wet shore that they galloped, out of control, into the surf, and the one Charlotte Picard was riding almost crushed her as it rolled over in the foam. In this spree, one of her young brothers was nearly carried off on the backwash, but she scrambled up in time to save him.
Shortly after this revivifying frolic, another uplifting event, the sighting of a sail, raised the spirits of every member of the shattered band. As she pulled closer, those on shore identified her as a French brig. The vessel had set about lowering her sails and had put a boat in the water. The brig was recognized as the Argus, last seen by these people an eternity of only three weeks earlier, in the Bay of Biscay, before the convoy had broken up so shortly after setting sail from France. A white handkerchief was hastily fastened to the bayonet end of a musket that a soldier stretched to wave on high. The ship acknowledged the signal, and Lieutenant Espiaux scribbled a message that was stuffed in a bottle and hung around the neck of one of the five Moorish guides who courageously rushed into the dangerous waves. About half an hour later, the Moors who had reached the longboat that was fighting unsuccessfully with the current reappeared floating three little barrels in front of them and carrying a reply stoppered in a bottle from Captain Parnajon to Lieutenant Espiaux. The Argus, having arrived safely and without incident in Senegal, had been dispatched to search the coast and to find the lost Medusa.14
The barrels appeared to the castaways like a gift from the heavens: wine, Dutch cheese, brandy, and biscuits. They set upon the cheese, which was beading with sweat in the vibrant late morning, and cupped the wine in little shells they found along the beach. Despite the tropical heat, the women, with the exception of Charlotte Picard, eagerly downed the brandy. Preferring liquid in quantity to a liquor capable of softening pain, Charlotte swapped her ration for more wine. There was great relief, a feeling that their luck had turned. Although the breakers prohibited the weary band from attempting to reach the Argus, at least they had been sighted. Their whereabouts were known, they had fed on familiar food, and help would surely soon be on its way. They signaled all the elation that their wasted bodies could muster and a new sense of hope rekindled a spark of purpose and possibility. People who, on the punishing sand and in the intolerable heat, had somehow found the energy to scrap with one another became, at a stroke, more tolerant. Smiles painfully broke the cracked lips of the children for the first time in days.
The appearance of the ship had also drawn the attention of a large group of Moors, who now approached the castaways, curious about these half naked, burned, and blistered remains of human beings who seemed, despite their state, so deliriously happy. Among the Moors were women keen to sell milk and butter, offering, at high prices, further sustenance to these deprived bodies who had fortunately escaped from the Medusa with a little cash. The cost of camel’s milk was variously recorded by Charlotte Picard and Charles-Marie Brédif at three and ten francs a glass. Perhaps the women took pity on a young girl in tatters, judged Brédif to be better off, or simply sensed his irritated assumption that he was certain to be fleeced.15
Having provisioned the tattered band, the Argus sailed off on its mission to find the Medusa. As the march recommenced, the morning’s unexpected bounty and delight gave way to the realities that stood between the castaways and their destination. Whenever the wind blew from the east, the horizon became like a white-hot furnace, and, as they marched along, the relentless sun burned their blistered skin. Brédif was filthy; his trousers, without braces, kept slipping and he was covered from head to toe with a thick coating of sand. His ragged clothes, a knife and fork—hardly useful here where the diet was purslane and rank water—a watch, and his small diary were all that he possessed in the world.16 Commenting on the behavior of the sailors whom he found so unruly as to be of danger to the rest of the group, Brédif wrote that if he were a naval officer, he “would like to shoot more than ten of the scoundrels,” for they were “real animals, beasts that should be driven with a cane or led with a rope. They are a thousand times unworthy of the kindness or the care of their officers whom they do not respect.”17
The dawns evaporated into mornings, mornings burned into afternoons, which melted into dusk and darkness. The castaways were beginning to lose all track of time. Picard was showing signs of complete exhaustion and Charlotte and her mother-in-law stayed with him while the other members of the family went on with the donkeys. Resting beside him, watching their kin disappear, they gave in to fatigue and fell asleep. Waking up to find the sun gone down, Picard realized that, despite all their efforts since leaving the Medusa, despite the promising start to the day, his ultimate weakness in submitting to a fatigue that he had fought with such determination had finally brought them to their end. There could be no rescue for those who had been reckless enough to break ranks and fall behind. Disturbed by his agitation, the two ladies awoke, started to get up, but fell back in a faint, traumatized by the sight of several large, bearded Moors towering above them on camels. Their shock, however, was momentary as one of these fearsome men began to speak in a broguish and tolerable French:
“Madame, reassure yourself, beneath this Arab costume is an Irishman come here to help you.”
He told the astonished Picards that the rest of the tattered band was waiting for them some five miles down the coast. His name was Kearney and, as he lived among the peoples of the region and knew the lay of the land, had been dispatched to search for the castaways by Colonel Brereton, the English commander in Senegal. They were told that a camel, loaded with supplies, had already been sent north in the direction of Portendick to look for other groups that might be struggling down the coast.
Finding themselves in a landscape in which the dunes were lower, their surroundings greener, and where there was fresh water, the main body of the group planned to rest until the small hours. Under Kearney’s guidance, the straggling Picards soon joined them.
The castaways began to sense that the end of their troubles was at hand. Not wishing to risk any threat from the wild animals they had heard on the previous evenings, they asked the soldiers to gather bracken and start a fire to keep danger at bay. Bloody-minded and wasted, the soldiers refused. Kearney gently calmed everybody’s nerves by assuring them that experienced Arab guides would be on guard while they rested.18
Journeying through the second half of the night, by early morning on July 12 they had passed from Moorish territory into that of the peaceful black tribes who inhabited the region of the Senegal River. The donkeys suddenly started to act up again. Standing rooted to the ground they hee-hawed, bucked their riders into the spiky bushes, and ran off. The heat now grew so intense that the frazzled group was, once again, obliged to cross the dunes in search of shelter. Without a donkey and barefoot, Charlotte Picard likened the temperature of the sand to that of an oven at the moment when a baker opens it to withdraw his bread.
Their speech had become slurred and although they were exhausted, there were scraps, scuffles, all kinds of combustible moments between half-crazed people seared by the heat. Perhaps they imagined that if Chaumareys and Schmaltz could do it, others too might try to put one over on them. The blistering trek was drawing on their last reserves of strength but they pushed on, not, Charlotte Picard adds, “without cursing the person who was the first cause of our sufferings.”
The worn out band was forced to stop and shelter from the savage heat under some acacia trees and wait while the tide, which blocked their progress down the coast, receded. The furnace-hot air refused to refresh them. Charlotte feared that, after overcoming so much hardship, she was at last going to surrender to death. A blacksmith named Borner handed her a little of the muddy water that he had conserved in a small barrel and she readily accepted it, taking great gulps of the nauseating solution. The ever attentive Captain Baignères, guessing at the repulsive aftertaste, offered Charlotte some crumbs of precious biscuit that he had conserved in his pocket. She chewed the mix of bread, dust, and tobacco but, unable to swallow it, gave it all mushed up to one of her famished younger brothers.
While Kearney went in search of supplies, black women arrived with water and some excellent cow’s milk, for sale. All drank their fill but few had the energy to eat when Kearney rejoined them, not with the promised ox but with rice and dried fish. Despite the high heat of the afternoon, when the tide had receded they went down to the shore, where they found their obdurate donkeys and where they cooled themselves in the waves that streaked up onto the beach. When Charlotte and her sister, after bathing in the sea for a good half hour, went to rest in the shade, one of the Moorish guides who accompanied Kearney, thinking them asleep and fascinated by the braid and buttons on the uniform worn by the sister, crept up close in the hope of detaching one or two of these trappings. Realizing that the ladies were just resting, and that he had been detected and recognized, he seemed content merely to inspect at close quarters.
As they took up the march again, they sighted several groups of Moorish raiders, notorious slavers who operated along the frontier of the Senegal River. Poorly armed and completely exhausted, some of the soldiers brandished their swords in the air to make the marauders think that they were fighting fit and well equipped, gestures that successfully sent the tribesmen on their way.
The breeze picked up, covering the sky with clouds. Thunder roared and a storm threatened. Again the marchers decided to stumble over the dunes in search of shelter. The sighting of an English schooner detained them on the shore as three blacks were sent out in a canoe to meet the ship, which had indeed been dispatched by the English governor in Saint-Louis to search for castaways. Returning from the schooner, the canoe was overturned, and though the blacks made it back to dry land, the supplies did not. Happily, however, Kearney had by then returned with the promised ox, and the troop trudged behind the hills to set up camp in a little clump of gum trees beside several freshwater wells. The ox was slaughtered, skinned, divided, and grilled over a fire and these raw remnants of people, sand-blasted by endless swirls of grit, sat like ghouls in the flickering flames of the campfire, chomping on dripping morsels of meat.
Some stretched out and tried to sleep, only to be plagued by a new menace, mosquitoes. Charlotte Picard had fallen into a kind of delirium. She imagined her companions depicted on canvas as cannibals. She trembled at the distant roars of wild beasts and, only after much tossing and turning, fell asleep.
The group set off in the early hours in order to make Saint-Louis as soon as possible. About seven a.m., Charlotte found herself toward the back of the caravan when she saw several aggressive Moors approaching, armed with lances. A ship’s apprentice often or twelve years old who walked a few paces away from her turned and, in a frightened voice, murmured, “My God, they’ve come to capture us.”
Encircling them, one of the Moors reined in Charlotte’s donkey and yelled into her face with violent gestures. The ship’s apprentice had scampered off and Charlotte started to cry as the Moor showed no signs of relinquishing his grip. By his gesticulations she guessed that he was asking where she was headed and so she shouted, at the top of her weakened lungs, “Ndar!”—Saint-Louis—the only word of his language she knew. At this, the angry marauder dropped the bridle and rejoined his friends, who all burst out laughing. Charlotte, mercifully, was free to rejoin the castaways.
The Senegal River was now only about five miles away. They were moving through a greener, lusher terrain in which parrots and promerops perched in the sheltering trees. Hummingbirds buzzed in the morning air. Where they had seen only white-hot sand, sky, and sea, now a roof of green relieved their sore and dazzled eyes. The softness of the vegetation and signs of sympathetic life provoked the most intense relief and stinging tears tumbled down over their red-raw cheeks.
In the final descent to the river’s edge, Charlotte’s donkey stumbled, throwing her into a spiky bush, tearing at her already tortured skin. While Kearney, accompanied by two officers, went ahead to alert the authorities in Saint-Louis that one contingent of about eighty survivors had made it to their destination, the castaways rested in the shade and, despite the crocodiles, eased their weary limbs and festering wounds in the fresh water of the river.
In the early afternoon they watched as a little boat rowed furiously toward them against the strong current. When it arrived, two Europeans leaped ashore, greeted the group, and asked for Picard, saying that they were here on the orders of his old friends Artigue and Labouré. They had a large basket for his family, containing fresh bread, cheese, Madeira, and filtered water as well as dresses for the ladies and clothes for Picard. The delighted family eagerly shared these provisions with those who had shown them kindness during the march.
By four p.m. on July 13, after more than three days in their lifeboats and a five-day desert march, the troop climbed aboard the boats sent by the English governor and started to sail toward Saint-Louis. When they arrived at six p.m., it seemed that the entire colony, with the exception of Colonel Schmaltz and Captain Chaumareys, had turned out to greet the euphoric survivors.19
“Respect, above all, the rights of man; so that no one can say of us: ‘The French have drunk the blood of their brothers, stuffed themselves with their flesh; the French were cannibals.’”
The group of fifty-seven people, the first to have been put ashore by Lieutenant Espiaux on July 6, found themselves stranded near Cap Mirick without supplies or water, listening to this admonitory declaration by their leader, Lieutenant Anglas de Praviel.
From the little hillock that Adjutant Petit climbed in order to take stock of their situation, he saw only an endless sweep of dunes, hypnotic like the sea, void of landmarks and dwellings, and offering no respite from the inhospitable and baking desert. Not only forbidding, it was fickle. When the desert wind whipped up, the battering, suffocating sand would dry up springs, efface paths, and change every contour so that what was there one day might disappear the next. Even the short, hot slog up to the vantage point made clear to the adjutant that any attempt to walk on this shifting terrain would plunge one’s feet deep into the burning ground. Fortunately, the safest route south to their destination was along the coast where the sand was firm. It may not be the shortest way to reach Saint-Louis, but it certainly seemed to be the best.20
In a heat that made Praviel’s head feel as if it were full of bubbling boiling liquid, they proceeded with greater military organization than was possible with Espiaux’s assorted band. They posted four armed men under a sergent-major as an advance guard, four armed men under a corporal in the rear, two corporals on their left flank, and used the sea to protect them on their right.
By the evening of July 6, without having eaten or drunk anything all day, and having slogged over the Mottes d’Angel, the high hills to the south of Cap Mirick, they found some deserted cabins, which, from the heads and feet of locusts scattered on the floor, they took to have been recently occupied by Moors. Sheltering from the wind that had been swirling up the sand and making the going tough, they rested there until, in the coolest part of the night, they set off again, hoping to find edible roots or plants and some sign of water. Unsuccessful, they fell back on seawater as a last resort, but were checked by sudden outbreaks of vomiting and diarrhea, reactions that doubtlessly saved some lives. Although seawater temporarily slakes the thirst, great quantities have a dehydrating effect: the kidneys are unable to cope with such large amounts of salt, and delirium and death follow in a matter of hours. As a safer alternative, several members of the troop chose to drink their own urine, but this, naturally enough, was hardly plentiful. In any case, those who tried it were revolted and soon gave up.
By July 8, hollowed by hunger, their skin cracked, their lips chapped, their tongues black and pasted to the roofs of their mouths, the castaways were more than half wishing to be rounded up and taken as slaves by the Moors; at least then they would be given water.21 On the following day, July 9, their fourth day of deprivation, a corporal’s wife fell exhausted onto the sand and died. The only witness to the fatality was her husband, who had stayed behind with her when she had collapsed; several people suspected him of having run her through with his saber to put her out of her misery. Alarmed by the woman’s death—most probably caused by the murderous climate and lack of water—fear spread among the exhausted troop as they staggered to a saltwater pond, where they spent the first part of that night. At about three a.m., when it would have been wise for them to move off, half the group was unable to summon the requisite strength. Praviel, paralyzed with exhaustion, beseeched a sailor to shoot him through the head, but his entreaty was flatly refused.
Portendick was where Espiaux had put ashore and was, for Anglas de Praviel and his troop, more than a third of the distance between Cap Mirick and Saint-Louis. The trading post had been in the possession of the English since 1808, so both groups of castaways hoped to find some sympathetic signs of European life. Instead they found the settlement, or what was left of it, deserted. The sight of the sand-covered remains of the longboat, the pinnace, and the Senegal boat with scattered traces of clothing or abandoned objects close by led Praviel and his frightened group to suspect the worst—that their comrades had been taken into captivity by hostile tribesmen.
During the next day, these wasted men looked on as one of their number started to dig into the sand. Thinking he was searching for water, they gathered around, only to watch him climb into the hole that he had hollowed out for his own grave. Glancing from person to person, he implored his comrades to take his life. Refusing his desperate, half-crazed pleas, they began to move on. Hanging back, one sailor, who had previously lent the man a jacket, climbed down into the grave and, believing the man to be dead, started to ransack his corpse, looking for anything of value. The victim, still alive, started to cry out in terror, summoning another straggler to his aid.
Their senses numbed, their tongues unable to articulate, and their minds increasingly succumbing to distraught fantasies, they struggled desperately to respect the oath they had taken as five or six of their number died, providing them with a possible source of sustenance. Now desperate for fluids, several men blocked the circulation in the end of a finger, pricked the skin, and sucked the oozing blood. Even the liquid from their numerous blisters offered some relief.
In the coolest part of the night, Adjutant Petit took three soldiers to explore some huts. Perhaps taken for raiders, or simply tired fools drawn into an obvious trap, they were surprised by a band of thirty Moors brandishing swords. Eventually encircling the entire troop, these Moors grabbed the shirts and uniforms hanging in tatters from the backs of the castaways. Then they led them off to a stagnant, moss-covered pool from which the troop gulped great quantities of stinking water, only to vomit seconds later. Conducted to the Moors camp, women and children, delighted in taunting the weary band while the two officers, Praviel and Petit, were summoned to meet with the chief who, in broken English, put several questions.
“What country?”
“France.”
“Where from?”
“France.
“Here how?”
“A storm wrecked our ship.”
“Where?”
“A day’s journey would take you there.”
“What carry?”22
Praviel tried to communicate the purpose of their voyage and expressed their urgent desire to reach Saint-Louis as soon as possible, offering the chief rewards of tobacco, guns, and powder if he would guide them. Pleased by the proposition, the Moor ordered a small portion of dried fish to be distributed, the first real food the castaways had eaten in six days. He then arranged for goatskins to be filled with water, and prepared everybody for immediate departure. They marched all day on the eleventh until, in the late evening, they arrived at some huts inhabited by Moors belonging to the same tribe as their guides and were subjected to the same cruel and insulting behavior that had greeted them in the middle of the previous night. Exhausted, they were allowed to rest for only two hours before resuming their march.
They had not traveled far when out of nowhere sprang a large band of bellowing Moors. They pulled up a little distance from the troop and told the castaways, in English, not to be afraid, that their argument was with the Moors who were guiding them. The bigger, better-armed troop that had charged as if in attack clearly fancied themselves the rightful proprietors of the unfortunates and wanted to take the troop as their prize, perhaps to guide them, perhaps to enslave them, perhaps to trade them. The dispute swung in the favor of the new arrivals who, before dispatching the outnumbered guides, cut off the vanquished chief’s beard as a sign of contempt.
“You belong to me,” declared the imperious Hammet, leader of the new band. The castaways were rounded up and led to a camp where they were left for two days. The Moorish women, every bit as cruel as those in the first camps, exacerbated the sufferings of the Europeans, taunting them sadistically and flinging fistfuls of sand at their running sores. As they slept, the blisters covering their sunburnt bodies rubbed against the ground and burst. To clean their wounds, they went down to the sea’s edge and attempted, against fierce, stinging pain, to wash them in saltwater.
On the fourth day of their captivity, they sighted the Argus tacking offshore, but as the castaways frantically signaled to the brig, it distanced itself, obviously mistaking them for Moors. During the next two days, they found no water but their captors gave them milk mixed with camel’s urine. This common source of nourishment for the nomadic desert tribes who spend up to a week without solid food was, at least, preferable to the putrid water they had been obliged to drink.23
On their sixth day with the Moors, they encountered the camel loaded with supplies that had been sent in the direction of Portendick by the Irishman Kearney. They were considerably sustained by these supplies and, three days later, the swarthy figure of Kearney himself, in magnificent Arab robes and mounted on a large camel, came into view, carrying a letter.
My dear Anglas, the person who brings you this letter is an English officer whose large and generous soul exposes him to all the dangers and inconveniences of a trip towards the place where you disembarked. … He knows the country, its language and customs perfectly … follow his advice carefully … The rest of us aboard the longboat and those from the other boats arrived here yesterday; we found a most generous welcome. Our ills are already eased, and we wait for the complete happiness that our reunion with you and those with you will bring …. Your friend, Espiaux.
Kearney distributed portions of rice, which some impatient sailors, to their subsequent discomfort, ate raw. Despite their terrible indigestion, the lesson appeared lost on them as they proceeded to devour the tough, raw meat of a bullock they had killed, suffering immediate diarrhea and vomiting. The less desperate or impetuous cooked their ox, following the Moorish example of making a hollow in the ground and starting a fire. The skinned and gutted animal was thrown into this heated pit and covered with sand over which another fire was lit.
Still about sixty miles from Saint-Louis, the castaways sighted the Argus once more and Kearney fired several shots to attract its attention. This time, the brig put out a boat, but the breakers proved too strong for it to reach the shore. Risking their necks, Hammet, his brother, and the Irishman plunged into the waves, managing to scramble aboard the boat. They rowed out to the ship and braved the pounding waves to return with biscuits and bottles of brandy. Though food and water was no longer a problem, conditions remained grim. Shoes that had been toughened in the intense heat cracked and disintegrated into the burning sand so that fired, blistered feet were further scorched and torn. The blinding reflection of the sun off the desert provoked pounding headaches and seared eyes. Mouths were parched white as frost. Tongues cleaved to hard palates as the baked air resisted their attempts to breathe. Yet after a further march, when the palm trees of Saint-Louis at last came into view, the troop became delirious.
It was seven p.m. on July 22, sixteen days after the castaways had been put ashore in the desert, when Praviel arrived in the tiny village of Guet N’Dar on the banks of the Senegal. A hideous sight in the underpants given to him by Kearney, his legs swollen from sunburn and insect bites, his body scarred and emaciated, his skin broiled, he looked like someone about to be ferried over the Styx as he climbed into a canoe to cross the river to Saint-Louis.24