nay, I fancied I talked with them, and looked at them steadily,
though I was broad awake, as at persons just before me; and this I
did till I often frightened myself with the images my fancy
represented to me. One time, in my sleep, I had the villainy of
the three pirate sailors so lively related to me by the first
Spaniard, and Friday’s father, that it was surprising: they told
me how they barbarously attempted to murder all the Spaniards, and
that they set fire to the provisions they had laid up, on purpose
to distress and starve them; things that I had never heard of, and
that, indeed, were never all of them true in fact: but it was so
warm in my imagination, and so realised to me, that, to the hour I
saw them, I could not be persuaded but that it was or would be
true; also how I resented it, when the Spaniard complained to me;
and how I brought them to justice, tried them, and ordered them all
three to be hanged. What there was really in this shall be seen in
its place; for however I came to form such things in my dream, and
what secret converse of spirits injected it, yet there was, I say,
much of it true. I own that this dream had nothing in it literally
and specifically true; but the general part was so true – the base;
villainous behaviour of these three hardened rogues was such, and
had been so much worse than all I can describe, that the dream had
too much similitude of the fact; and as I would afterwards have
punished them severely, so, if I had hanged them all, I had been
much in the right, and even should have been justified both by the
laws of God and man.
But to return to my story. In this kind of temper I lived some
years; I had no enjoyment of my life, no pleasant hours, no
agreeable diversion but what had something or other of this in it;
so that my wife, who saw my mind wholly bent upon it, told me very
seriously one night that she believed there was some secret,
powerful impulse of Providence upon me, which had determined me to
go thither again; and that she found nothing hindered me going but
my being engaged to a wife and children. She told me that it was
true she could not think of parting with me: but as she was
assured that if she was dead it would be the first thing I would
do, so, as it seemed to her that the thing was determined above,
she would not be the only obstruction; for, if I thought fit and
resolved to go – [Here she found me very intent upon her words, and
that I looked very earnestly at her, so that it a little disordered
her, and she stopped. I asked her why she did not go on, and say
out what she was going to say? But I perceived that her heart was
too full, and some tears stood in her eyes.] “Speak out, my dear,”
said I; “are you willing I should go?” – “No,” says she, very
affectionately, “I am far from willing; but if you are resolved to
go,” says she, “rather than I would be the only hindrance, I will
go with you: for though I think it a most preposterous thing for
one of your years, and in your condition, yet, if it must be,” said
she, again weeping, “I would not leave you; for if it be of Heaven
you must do it, there is no resisting it; and if Heaven make it
your duty to go, He will also make it mine to go with you, or
otherwise dispose of me, that I may not obstruct it.”
This affectionate behaviour of my wife’s brought me a little out of
the vapours, and I began to consider what I was doing; I corrected
my wandering fancy, and began to argue with myself sedately what
business I had after threescore years, and after such a life of
tedious sufferings and disasters, and closed in so happy and easy a