This was a dreadful sight to me, especially when, going to the shore, I could see the marks of horror which the dismal work they had been about had left behind it, namely, the blood, the bones, and part of the flesh of human bodies, eaten and devoured by those wretches with merriment and sport. I was so filled with indignation at the sight, that I began now to premeditate the destruction of the next that I saw there, let them be who or how many soever.
It seemed evident to me, that the visits which they thus made to this island were not very frequent; for it was above fifteen months before any more of them came on shore there again—that is to say, I never saw them, or any footsteps or signals of them, in all that time; for as to the rainy seasons, then they are sure not to come abroad, at least not so far; yet all this while I lived uncomfortably, by reason of constant apprehensions I was in of their coming upon me by surprise—from whence I observe, that the expectation of evil is more bitter than the suffering, especially if there is no room to shake off that expectation or those apprehensions.
During all this time I was in the murdering humour, and took up most of my hours, which should have been better employed, in contriving how to circumvent and fall upon them the very next time I should see them, especially if they should be divided, as they were the last time, into two parties; nor did I consider at all, that if I killed one party, suppose ten or a dozen, I was still the next day, or week, or month, to kill another, and so another, even ad infinitum, till I should be at length no less a murderer than they were in being men-eaters, and perhaps much more so.
I spent my days now in great perplexity and anxiety of mind, expecting that I should one day or other fall into the hands of those merciless creatures; if I did at any time venture abroad, it was not without looking round me with the greatest care and caution imaginable; and now I found, to my great comfort, how happy it was that I had provided a tame flock or herd of goats; for I durst not upon any account fire my gun, especially near that side of the island where they usually came, lest I should alarm the savages; and if they had fled from me now, I was sure to have them come back again, with perhaps two or three hundred canoes with them in a few days, and then I knew what to expect.
However, I wore out a year and three months more before I ever saw any more of the savages, and then I found them again, as I shall soon observe. It is true, they might have been there once or twice, but either they made no stay, or at least I did not hear them; but in the month of May, as near as I could calculate, and in my four and twentieth year, I had a very strange encounter with them, of which in its place.
The perturbation of my mind, during this fifteen or sixteen months’ interval, was very great; I slept unquiet, dreamed always frightful dreams, and often started out of my sleep in the night; in the day great troubles overwhelmed my mind; in the night I dreamed often of killing the savages, and the reasons why I might justify the doing of it. But to waive all this for a while; it was in the middle of May, on the sixteenth day, I think, as well as my poor wooden calendar would reckon, for I marked all upon the post still—I say, it was on the sixteenth of May that it blew a great storm of wind all day, with a great deal of lightning and thunder, and a very foul night was after it; I know not what was the particular occasion of it; but as I was reading in the Bible, and taken up with serious thoughts about my present condition, I was surprised with the noise of a gun, as I thought, fired at sea.