Amongst the numerous objects that struck my observation at this period I was much affected with the appearance and conduct of some of the dear children, who, quite unconscious, in the cuddy cabins, of the perils that surrounded them, continued to play as usual with their little toys in bed, or to put the most innocent and unseasonable questions to those around them. To some of the older children, who seemed fully alive to the reality of the danger, I whispered, "Now is the time to put in practice the instructions you used to receive at the Regimental School, and to think of that Saviour of whom you have heard so much." They replied, as the tears ran down their cheeks, "Oh, sir, we are trying to remember them, and we are praying to God." The passive condition to which we were all reduced by the total failure of our most strenuous exertions, while it was well calculated, and probably designed, to convince us afterwards that our deliverance was effected, not by our own might or power, but by the Spirit of the Lord, afforded us ample room at the moment for deep and awful reflection, which, it is to be earnestly wished, may have been improved, as well by those who were eventually saved as by those who perished. It has been observed by the author of the Retrospect, that "in the heat of battle, it is not only possible but easy to forget death, and cease to think; but in the cool and protracted hours of a shipwreck, where there is often nothing to engage the mind but the recollection of tried and unsuccessful labours, and the sight of unavoidable and increasing harbingers of destruction, it is not easy or possible to forget ourselves or a future state." The general applicability of the latter part of this proposition I am disposed to doubt; for if I were to judge of the feelings of all on board by those of the number who were heard to express them, I should apprehend that a large majority of those men, whose previous attention has never been fairly and fully directed to the great subject of religion, approach the gates of death, it may be with solemnity, or with terror, but without any definable or tangible conviction of the fact that after death cometh the judgment.