gs would have prevailed. But now that promise,--once so
painfully made, and since that, as I had thought, forgotten by all
but myself,--was remembered against me as a proof of the diabolical
inhumanity of my disposition.

"I believe that they think that we mean to eat them," I said one day
to Crosstrees. He had gradually become my confidential friend, and to
him I made known all the sorrows which fell upon me during the voyage
from the ignorance of the men around me. I cannot boast that I had in
the least affected his opinion by my arguments; but he at any rate
had sense enough to perceive that I was not a bloody-minded cannibal,
but one actuated by a true feeling of philanthropy. He knew that my
object was to do good, though he did not believe in the good to be
done.

"You've got to endure that," said he.

"Do you mean to say, that when I get to England I shall be regarded
with personal feelings of the same kind?"

"Yes; so I imagine." There was an honesty about Crosstrees which
would never allow him to soften anything.

"That will be hard to bear."

"The first reformers had to bear such hardships. I don't exactly
remember what it was that Socrates wanted to do for his ungrateful
fellow-mortals; but they thought so badly of him, that they made him
swallow poison. Your Galileo had a hard time when he said that the
sun stood still. Why should we go further than Jesus Christ for an
example? If you are not able to bear the incidents, you should not
undertake the business."

But in England I should not have a single disciple! There would not
be one to solace or to encourage me! Would it not be well that I
should throw myself into the ocean, and have done with a world so
ungrateful? In Britannula they had known my true disposition. There
I had received the credit due to a tender heart and loving feelings.
No one thought there that I wanted to eat up my victims, or that I
would take a pleasure in spilling their blood with my own hands. And
tidings so misrepresenting me would have reached England before me,
and I should there have no friend. Even Lieutenant Crosstrees would
be seen no more after I had gone ashore. Then came upon me for the
first time an idea that I was not wanted in England at all,--that I
was simply to be brought away from my own home to avoid the supposed
mischief I might do there, and that for all British purposes it would
be well that I should be dropped into the sea, or left ashore on some
deser