Anxious preparations were made for immediate departure from a place, which had been fatal to so many unhappy sufferers. Of one hundred and twenty-two persons on board the Nautilus when she struck, fifty-eight had perished. Eighteen were drowned, it was supposed, at the moment of the catastrophe, and one in attempting to reach the boat, five were lost on the small raft, and thirty-four died of famine. About fifty now embarked in four fishing vessels, and landed the same evening at the island of Cerigotto, making altogether sixty-four individuals, including those who escaped in the whale-boat. Six days had been passed on the rock, nor had the people, during that time, received any assistance, excepting from the human flesh of which they had participated.
The survivors landed at a small creek in the island of Cerigotto, after which they had to go to a considerable distance before reaching the dwellings of their friends. Their first care was to send for the master's mate, who had escaped to the island of Pori, and had been left behind when the whale-boat came down to the rock. He and his companions had exhausted all the fresh water, but lived on the sheep and goats, which they caught among the rocks, and had drank their blood. There they had remained in a state of great uncertainty concerning the fate of those who had left them in the boat.
Though the Greeks could not aid the seamen in the care of their wounds, they treated them with great care and hospitality; but medical assistance being important, from the pain the sufferers endured, and having nothing to bind up their wounds but shirts which they tore into bandages, they were eager to reach Cerigo. The island of Cerigotto, where they had landed, was a dependency on the other, about fifteen miles long, ten broad, and of a barren and unproductive soil, with little cultivation. Twelve or fourteen families of Greek fishermen dwelt upon it, as the pilot had said, who were in a state of extreme poverty. Their houses, or rather huts, consisting of one or two rooms on the same floor, were, in general, built against the side of a rock; the walls composed of clay and straw, and the roof supported by a tree in the centre of the dwelling. Their food was a coarse kind of bread, formed of boiled pease and flour, which was made into a kind of paste for the strangers, with once or twice a bit of kid; and that was all which they could expect from their deliverers. But they made a liquor from corn, which having an agreeable flavour, and being a strong spirit, was drank with avidity by the sailors.