Even when I was, on due consideration, made sensible of my condition, how I was cast on this dreadful place, out of the reach of human kind, out of all prospect of redemption, as soon as I saw but a prospect of living, and that I should not starve and perish for hunger, all the sense of my affliction wore off. These were thoughts which very seldom entered into my head.
But now, when I began to be sick, and a leisure view of the miseries of death came to place itself before me, when my spirits began to sink under the burden of a strong distemper, and nature was exhausted with the violence of the fever, conscience, that had slept so long, began to awake. I reproached myself with my past life, in which I had, by uncommon wickedness, invited dark creatures unto my soul which God in his vindictiveness did allow.
It is good that I mention some may find the beast to be a dark creature, and it is a wild and vicious one, but in truth it is a part of nature, as has my father often taught all his sons, and as his father taught him.
These reflections oppressed me for the second or third day of my distemper. In the violence, as well of the fever as of the dreadful terror of my dream, extorted from me some words like praying to God. Tho’ I cannot say it was a prayer attended either with desires or with hopes. It was rather the voice of mere fright and distress. It was exclamation, such as, "Lord, what a miserable creature am I! What will become of me?" Then the tears burst out of my eyes, and I could say no more for a good while.
In this interval, the good advice of my father came to my mind, and his prediction which I mentioned at the beginning of this story. "Now," said I, aloud, "my dear father's words are come to pass. God's justice has overtaken me, and I have none to help or hear me. I rejected the voice of Providence, which had mercifully put me in a station of life wherein I might have been happy and easy. I would neither see it myself, nor learn from my parents to know the blessing of it. I left them to mourn over my folly, and now I am left to mourn under the consequences of it."
This was the first prayer, if I may call it so, I had made for many years.
But I return to my Journal.
June 28.
Having been somewhat refreshed with the sleep I had had, and the fit being entirely off, I got up. Tho’ the fright and terror of my dream was very great, yet I considered the fit of the ague would return again the next day, and now was my time to get something to refresh and support myself when I should be ill. The first thing I did was to fill a large square case-bottle with water and set it upon my table in reach of my bed. To take off the chill or aguish disposition of the water, I put about a quarter of a pint of rum into it and mixed them together, which the sailors call grog. Then I got me a piece of goat's flesh, and broiled it on the coals, but could eat very little. I walked about but was very weak and withal very sad and heavy-hearted under a sense of my miserable condition, dreading the return of my distemper the next day and a return of the dream if I slept. At night, I made my supper of three of the turtle's eggs, which I roasted in the ashes and ate in the shell.
After I had eaten, I tried to walk, but found myself so weak I could hardly carry the gun, for I never went out without that. So I went but a little way and sat down upon the ground, looking out upon the sea, which was just before me, and very calm and smooth. It did appear in my thoughts that this was the same place I had sat for the earthquake and the same place I also sat during my most horrible dream.
As I sat here, some such thoughts as these occurred to me. What was the awful dream lord which still darken'd my mood so? Whence did such a vision produce from? Did the beast truly see this dark lord, or was that meerly part of the dream as well? Surely some secret power was having influence over me. And who is that?
It did come to my mind that this power was guilt, or riding upon my guilt the way one would ride a horse. The death of the mate still hung heavy in my thoughts, and as guilty as his death made me was that I, who considered myself good among men, had not even made clear to learn or remember his name, a point I had not put to words before. Truly was I a wretch, and the beast as thrice-damned as the church did teach. Could there be another reason God had seen fit to have this banishment befall me?
However, I then bethought myself that if God guides and governs all his creations, and all things that concern them, for the power that could make all things must have power to guide and direct them, nothing can happen in the great circuit of his works either without his knowledge or appointment. How, then, did this come to pass? If I was a wretch and the beast thrice-damned, why were we not long ago destroyed? Why was I not drown'd in Yarmouth Roads, kill'd in the fight when the ship was taken by the Sallee pirates, or devoured by the wild creatures of Africk? Why was I not allowed to throw myself from the rail here when all the crew perish'd but myself?