lly many things which I
wanted, so indeed I thought that the frights I had been in about these
savage wretches, and the concern I had been in for my own preservation,
had taken off the edge of my invention for my own conveniences, and I
had dropped a good design, which I had once bent my thoughts upon; and
that was, to try if I could not make some of my barley into malt, and
then try to brew myself some beer: this was really a whimsical thought,
and I reproved myself often for the simplicity of it; for I presently
saw there would be the want of several things necessary to the making my
beer, that it would be impossible for me to supply; as, first, casks to
preserve it in, which was a thing that, as I have observed already, I
could never compass; no, though I spent not many days, but weeks, nay
months, in attempting it, but to no purpose. In the next place, I had no
hops to make it keep, no yeast to make it work, no copper or kettle to
make it boil; and yet, had not all these things intervened, I mean the
frights and terrors I was in about the savages, I had undertaken it, and
perhaps brought it to pass too; for I seldom gave any thing over without
accomplishing it, when I once had it in my head enough to begin it.

But my invention now ran quite another way; for night and day I could
think of nothing, but how I might destroy some of these monsters in
their cruel bloody entertainment, and, if possible, save the victim they
should bring hither to destroy. It would take up a larger volume than
this whole work is intended to be, to set down all the contrivances I
hatched, or rather brooded upon in my thoughts, for the destroying these
creatures, or at least frightening them, so as to prevent their coming
hither any more; but all was abortive; nothing could be possible to take
effect, unless I was to be there to do it myself; and what could one man
do among them, when perhaps there might be twenty or thirty of them
together, with their darts, or their bows and arrows, with which they
could shoot as true to a mark as I could with my gun?

Sometimes I contrived to dig a hole under the place where they made
their fire, and put in five or six pounds of gunpowder, which, when they
kindled their fire, would consequently take fire, and blow up all that
was near it; but, as in the first place I should be very loath to waste
so much powder upon them, my store being now within the quantity of a
barrel, so neither could I be sure of it