Besides this, I kept myself, as I
said, more retired than ever, and seldom went from my cell except
upon my constant employment, to milk my she-goats, and manage my
little flock in the wood, which, as it was quite on the other part
of the island, was out of danger; for certain, it is that these
savage people, who sometimes haunted this island, never came with
any thoughts of finding anything here, and consequently never
wandered off from the coast, and I doubt not but they might have
been several times on shore after my apprehensions of them had made
me cautious, as well as before. Indeed, I looked back with some
horror upon the thoughts of what my condition would have been if I
had chopped upon them and been discovered before that; when, naked
and unarmed, except with one gun, and that loaded often only with
small shot, I walked everywhere, peeping and peering about the
island, to see what I could get; what a surprise should I have been
in if, when I discovered the print of a man's foot, I had, instead
of that, seen fifteen or twenty savages, and found them pursuing
me, and by the swiftness of their running no possibility of my
escaping them! The thoughts of this sometimes sank my very soul
within me, and distressed my mind so much that I could not soon
recover it, to think what I should have done, and how I should not
only have been unable to resist them, but even should not have had
presence of mind enough to do what I might have done; much less
what now, after so much consideration and preparation, I might be
able to do.
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