I think you must be already sensible that the circumstances of our situation on board the _Kent_ did not enable us conscientiously to save a single article, either of public or private property, from the flames; indeed, the only thing I preserved--with the exception of forty or fifty sovereigns, which I hastily tied up in my pocket handkerchief, and put into my wife's hands, at the moment she was lifted into the boat, as a provision for herself and her companions against the temporary want to which they might be exposed on some foreign shore--was the pocket compass, which you yourself presented to me.[16] But I would have you to be assured, that the total abandonment of individual interests on the part of the officers of the ship, and of the 31st regiment, was occasioned by no want of self-possession, nor even, in all cases, of opportunities to attend to them; but to a sincere desire to avoid even the appearance of selfishness, at moments when the valuable lives of their sailors and soldiers were at stake. And this observation applies with still greater force to the senior officers in both services, whose cabins being upon the upper deck were accessible during the whole day; and where many portable articles of value were deposited, which could have been very easily carried off, had those officers been disposed to devote to their own concerns even a portion of that precious time, and of those active exertions, which they unremittingly applied to the performance of their professional duty.