After these thoughts had for some time entertained me, I came to reflect seriously upon the real danger I had been in for so many years in this very island; and how I had walked about in the greatest security, and with all possible tranquillity even, perhaps, when nothing but a brow of a hill, a great tree, or the casual approach of night, had been between me and the worst kind of destruction—namely, that of falling into the hands of cannibals and savages, who would have seized on me with the same view as I did on a goat or a turtle, and have thought it no more a crime to kill and devour me than I did of a pigeon or a curlew. I should unjustly slander myself, if I should say I was not sincerely thankful to my great Preserver, to whose singular protection I acknowledged with great humility, that all these unknown deliverances were due, and without which I should inevitably have fallen into their merciless hands.
When these thoughts were over, my head was for some time taken up in considering the nature of these wretched creatures, I mean the savages; and how it came to pass in the world, that the wise Governor of all things should give up any of his creatures to such inhumanity—nay, to something so much below even brutality itself—as to devour its own kind; but as this ended in some (at that time fruitless) speculations, it occurred to me to enquire what part of the world these wretches lived in; how far off the coast it was from whence they came; what they ventured so far from home for; what kind of boats they had; and why I might not order myself and my business, so that I might be as able to go over thither as they were to come to me.
I never so much as troubled myself to consider what I should do with myself when I came thither; what should become of me if I fell into the hands of the savages; or how I should escape from them if they attempted to take me; no, nor so much as how it was possible for me to reach the coast, and not be attacked by some or other of them, without any possibility of delivering myself; and, if I should not fall into their hands, what I should do for provision, or whither I should bend my course; none of these thoughts, I say, so much as came in my way; but my mind was wholly bent upon the notion of my passing over in my boat to the mainland. I looked back upon my present condition as the most miserable that could possibly be; that I was not able to throw myself into anything but death that could be called worse; that if I reached the shore of the main, I might perhaps meet with relief; or I might coast along, as I did on the shore of Africa, till I came to some inhabited country, and where I might find some relief; and after all, perhaps, I might fall in with some Christian ship that might take me in; and if the worst came to the worst, I could but die, which would put an end to all these miseries at once. Pray, note, all this was the fruit of a disturbed mind—an impatient temper, made, as it were, desperate by the long continuance of my troubles, and the disappointments I had met in the wreck I had been on board of, and where I had been so near the obtaining of what I so earnestly longed for, namely, somebody to speak to, and to learn some knowledge from of the place where I was, and of the probable means of my deliverance—I say, I was agitated wholly by these thoughts. All my calm of mind in my resignation to Providence, and waiting the issue of the dispositions of Heaven, seemed to be suspended; and I had, as it were, no power to turn my thoughts to any thing but the project of a voyage to the main which came upon me with such force, and such an impetuosity of desire, that it was not to be resisted.