When I had considered this a little, it followed necessarily, that I was certainly in the wrong in it—that these people were not murderers in the sense that I had before condemned them in my thoughts, any more than those Christians were murderers, who often put to death the prisoners taken in battle; or more frequently, upon many occasions, put whole troops of men to the sword, without giving quarter, though they threw down their arms and submitted.
In the next place, it occurred to me, that albeit the usage they gave one another was thus brutish and inhuman, yet it was really nothing to me; these people had done me no injury—that if they attempted me, or I saw it necessary, for my immediate preservation, to fall upon them, something might be said for it; but that I was yet out of their power, and they had really no knowledge of me, and consequently no design upon me, and therefore, it could not be just for me to fall upon them—that this would justify the conduct of the Spaniards, in all their barbarities practised in America, where they destroyed millions of these people, who, however they were idolators and barbarians, and had several bloody and barbarous rites in their customs—such as sacrificing human bodies to their idols—were yet, as to the Spaniards, very innocent people; and that the rooting them out of the country is spoken of with the utmost abhorrence and detestation, even by the Spaniards themselves, at this time, and by all other Christian nations of Europe as a mere butchery, a bloody and unnatural piece of cruelty, unjustifiable either to God or man, and such, as for which the very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible to all people of humanity, or of Christian compassion; as if the kingdom of Spain were particularly eminent for the product of a race of men who were without principles of tenderness, or the common bowels of pity to the miserable, which is reckoned to be a mark of a generous temper in the mind.
These considerations really put me to a pause, and to a kind of a full stop; and I began by little and little to be off my design, and to conclude I had taken a wrong measure in my resolution to attack the savages—that it was not my business to meddle with them, unless they first attacked me, and this it was my business, if possible, to prevent; but that, if I were discovered and attacked, then I knew my duty.
On the other hand, I argued with myself that this really was not the way to deliver myself, but entirely to ruin and destroy myself; for unless I was sure to kill every one that not only should be on shore at that time, but that should ever come on shore afterwards—if but one of them escaped to tell their country-people what had happened, they would come over again by thousands to revenge the death of their fellows; and I should only bring upon myself a certain destruction, which at present I had no manner of occasion for.
Upon the whole, I concluded, that neither in principles nor in policy, I ought one way or other to concern myself in this affair—that my business was, by all possible means, to conceal myself from them, and not to leave the least signal to them to guess by that there were any living creatures upon the island, I mean of human shape.
Religion joined in with this prudential resolution, and I was convinced now many ways that I was perfectly out of my duty, when I was laying all my bloody schemes for the destruction of innocent creatures—I mean, innocent as to me; as to the crimes they were guilty of towards one another, I had nothing to do with them; they were national punishments to make a just retribution for national offences, and to bring public judgments upon those who offended in a public manner, by such ways as best please God.
This appeared so clear to me now, that nothing was a greater satisfaction to me, than that I had not been suffered to do a thing which I now saw so much reason to believe would have been no less a sin than that of wilful murder, if I had committed it; and I gave most humble thanks on my knees to God, that had thus delivered me from blood-guiltiness, beseeching him to grant me the protection of his providence, that I might not fall into the hands of barbarians, or that I might not lay my hands upon them, unless I had a more clear call from Heaven to do it, in defence of my own life.