uch thing. I cannot explain, by any possible energy
of words, what a strange longing I felt in my soul upon this sight,
breaking out sometimes thus: "Oh that there had been but one or two, nay,
or but one soul saved out of this 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 springs in the affections which, when they are set
a-going by some object in view, or, 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. 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 clinch
together, and my fingers would press the palms of my hands, so that if I
had had any soft thing in my hand I should have crushed it involuntarily;
and the 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 naturalists explain these things, and the reason and manner of them.
All I can do is to describe the fact, which was even surprising to me
when I found it, though I knew not from whence it proceeded; 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 no clothes on but a seaman's waistcoat, a
pair of open-kneed 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 pockets but two pieces of eight and a tobacco pipe--the last was to
me of ten times more value than the first.

It was now calm, and I had a great mind t