stice and unkindness if I here
omitted to bear my humble testimony to the manly behaviour of the East
India Company's cadets, and other private passengers on board, who
emulated the best conduct of the officers of the ship and of the troops,
and equally participated with them in all the hardships and exertions of
the day.

As an agreeable proof, too, of the subordination and good feeling that
governed the poor soldiers in the midst of their sufferings, I ought to
state that towards evening, when the melancholy groups who were
passively seated on the poop, exhausted by previous fatigue, anxiety,
and fasting, were beginning to experience the pain of intolerable
thirst, a box of oranges was accidentally discovered by some of the men,
who, with a degree of mingled consideration, respect, and affection,
that could hardly have been expected at such a moment, refused to
partake of the grateful beverage until they had offered a share of it to
their officers.

I regret that the circumstances under which I write do not allow me
sufficient time for recalling to my recollection all the busy thoughts
that engaged my own mind on that eventful day, or the various
conjectures which I ventured to form of what was passing in the minds of
others.

But one idea was forcibly suggested to me,--that instead of being able
to trace amongst my numerous associates that diversity of fortitude
which I should have expected would mark their conduct--forming, as it
were, a descending series, from the decided heroism exhibited by some,
down to the lowest degree of pusillanimity and frenzy discoverable in
others,--I remarked that the mental condition of my fellow-sufferers was
rather divided by a broad but, as it afterwards appeared, not impassable
line; on the one side of which were ranged all whose minds were greatly
elevated by the excitement above their ordinary standard; and on the
other was to be seen the incalculably smaller but more conspicuous
group, whose powers of acting and thinking became absolutely paralyzed,
or were driven into delirium, by the unusual character and pressure of
the danger.

Nor was it uninteresting to observe the curious interchange, at least
externally, of strength and weakness that obtained between those two
discordant parties, during the day. Some whose agitation and timidity
had, in the earlier part of it, rendered them objects of pity or
contempt, afterwards rose, by some great internal effort, into positive
di