pproach of the fatal crisis itself. With a view to
ensure a greater probability of being discovered by those in the boats,
some of the more collected and hardy soldiers (for I think almost all
the sailors had already effected their escape) took the precaution to
tie towels and such like articles round their heads, previously to their
committing themselves to the water.

As the boats were nearly three-quarters of an hour absent between each
trip--which period was necessarily spent by those in the wreck in a
state of fearful inactivity--abundant opportunity was afforded for
collecting the sentiments of many of the unhappy men around me; some of
whom, after remaining perhaps for a while in silent abstraction, would
suddenly burst forth, as if awakened from some terrible dream to a still
more frightful reality, into a long train of loud and desponding
lamentation, that gradually subsided into its former stillness.

It was during those trying intervals of rest that religious instruction
and consolation appeared to be the most required and the most
acceptable. Some there were who endeavoured to dispense it agreeably to
the visible wants and feelings of the earnest hearers. On one of those
occasions, especially, the officer to whom I have already alluded was
entreated to pray. His prayer was short, but was frequently broken by
the exclamations of assent to some of its confessions, that were wrung
from the afflicted hearts of his auditors.

I know not in what manner, under those circumstances, spiritual hope or
comfort could have been ministered to my afflicted companions by those
who regard works, either wholly or partly, as the means of propitiating
divine justice, rather than the evidence and fruits of that faith which
pacifies the conscience and purifies the heart. But in some few cases,
at least, where the individuals deplored the want of time for repentance
and good works, I well remember that no arguments tended to soothe their
troubled minds but those which went directly to assure them of the
freeness and fulness of that grace which is not refused, even in the
eleventh hour, to the very chief of sinners. And if any of those to whom
I now allude have been spared to read this record of their feelings in
the prospect of death, it will be well for them to keep solemnly in mind
the vows they then took upon them, and to seek to improve that season of
probation which they so earnestly besought, and which has been so
merciful