These considerations really put me to a pause, and to a kind of a
full stop; and I began by little and little to be off my design,
and to conclude I had taken wrong measures in my resolution to
attack the savages; and that it was not my business to meddle with
them, unless they first attacked me; and this it was my business,
if possible, to prevent: but that, if I were discovered and
attacked by them, I knew my duty. On the other hand, I argued with
myself that this really was the way not to deliver myself, but
entirely to ruin and destroy myself; for unless I was sure to kill
every one that not only should be on shore at that time, but that
should ever come on shore afterwards, if but one of them escaped to
tell their country-people what had happened, they would come over
again by thousands to revenge the death of their fellows, and I
should only bring upon myself a certain destruction, which, at
present, I had no manner of occasion for. Upon the whole, I
concluded that I ought, neither in principle nor in policy, one way
or other, to concern myself in this affair: that my business was,
by all possible means to conceal myself from them, and not to leave
the least sign for them to guess by that there were any living
creatures upon the island - I mean of human shape.
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