All these were but conjectures at best; so, in the condition I was in, I could do no more than look upon the misery of the poor men, and pity them; which had still this good effect upon my side, that it gave me more and more cause to give thanks to God, who had so happily and comfortably provided for me in my desolate condition, and that, of two ships’ companies, who were now cast away upon this part of the world, not one life should be spared but mine. I learned here again to observe, that it is very rare that the providence of God casts us into any condition of life so low, or any misery so great, but we may see something or other to be thankful for, and may see others in worse circumstances than our own.
Such certainly was the case of these men, of whom I could not so much as see room to suppose any of them were saved; nothing could make it rational so much as to wish or expect that they did not all perish there, except the possibility only of their being taken up by another ship in company—and this was but mere possibility indeed; for I saw not the least signal or appearance of any such thing.
I cannot explain, by any possible energy of words, what a strange longing, or hankering of desire, I felt in my soul upon this sight—breaking out sometimes thus: “Oh that there had been but one or two, nay, but one soul saved out of the ship, to have escaped to me, that I might but have had one companion, one fellow-creature, to have spoken to me, and to have conversed with!” In all the time of my solitary life, I never felt so earnest, so strong a desire after the society of my fellow-creatures, or so deep a regret at the want of it.
There are some secret moving springs in the affections, which, when they are set a-going by some object in view, or be it some object though not in view, yet rendered present to the mind by the power of imagination, that motion carries out the soul by its impetuosity to such violent eager embracings of the object, that the absence of it is insupportable.
Such were these earnest wishings that but one man had been saved! Oh, that it had been but one! I believe I repeated the words, “Oh, that it had been but one!” a thousand times; and my desires were so moved by it, that when I spoke the words, my hands would clench together, and my fingers press the palms of my hands, that if I had had any soft thing in my hand, it would have crushed it involuntarily; and my teeth in my head would strike together, and set against one another so strong, that for some time I could not part them again.
Let the naturalist explain these things, and the reason and manner of them; all I can say of them is, to describe the fact, which was very surprising to me when I found it, though I knew not from what it should proceed: it was doubtless the effect of ardent wishes, and of strong ideas formed in my mind, realising the comfort which the conversation of one of my fellow Christians would have been to me.
But it was not to be; either their fate, or mine, or both, forbade it; for till the last year of my being on this island, I never knew whether any were saved out of that ship or no; and had only the affliction, some days after, to see the corpse of a drowned boy come on shore, at the end of the island which was next the shipwreck: he had on no clothes but a seaman’s waistcoat, a pair of open knee’d linen drawers, and a blue linen shirt; but nothing to direct me so much as to guess what nation he was of. He had nothing in his pocket but two pieces of eight, and a tobacco pipe: the last was to me of ten times more value than the first.