LOSS OF THE KENT. 19 
When the greater part of the men had been disposed of, 
the gradual removal of the officers commenced, and was mark- 
ed by a discipline the most rigid, and an intrepidity the most 
exemplary : none appearing to be influenced by a vain and 
ostentatious bravery, which in cases of extreme peril affords 
rather a presumptive proof of secret timidity than of fortitude ; 
nor any betraying of unmanly or unsoldier-like impatience to 
quit the ship ; but with the becoming deportment of men nei- 
ther paralyzed by, nor profanely insensible to, the accumulat- 
ing dangers that encompassed them, they progressively de- 
parted in the different boats w4th their soldiers — they who 
happened to proceed first leaving behind them an example of 
coolness that could not be unprofitable to those who followed. 
Every individual was desired to tie a rope round his waist. 
While the people were busily occupied in adopting this re- 
commendation, I was surprised, I had almost said amused, by 
the singular delicacy of one of the. Irish recruits, who, in 
searching for a rope in one of the cabins, called out to me 
that he could find none except the cordage belonging to an 
officer's cot, and wished to know whether there wouW be 
any harm in his appropriating it to his own use. 
Again, as an agreeable proof, too, of the subordination and 
good feelings that governed the poor soldiers in the midst of 
their sufferings, I ought to state that toward evening, when 
the melancholy groupe who were passively seated on the 
poop, exhausted by previous fatigue, anxiety and fasting, were 
oeginning 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 af- 
fection that could hardly have been expected at such a mo- 
ment, refused to partake of the grateful beverage until they 
had afforded a share of it to their officers. 
The spanker-boom of so large a ship as the Kent, which 
projects, I should think, sixteen or eighteen feet over the stern, 
rests, on ordinary occasions, about nineteen or twenty feet 
above the water ; but in the position in which we were placed, 
from the great height of the sea, and consequent pitching of 
the ship, it was frequently lifted to a height of not less than 
thirty or forty feet from the surface. 
To reach the rope, therefore, that hung from its extremity 
was an operation that seemed to require the aid of as much 
dexterity of hand as steadiness of head. For it was not only 
he nervousness of creeping along the boom itself, or the ex- 
treme difficulty of afterward seizing on and sliding down by 
