y moment in my fancy, and what strange, unaccountable whimsies came
into my thoughts by the way.

When I came to my castle (for so I think I called it ever after this), I
fled into it like one pursued. Whether I went over by the ladder, as
first contrived, or went in at the hole in the rock, which I had called a
door, I cannot remember; no, nor could I remember the next morning, for
never frightened hare fled to cover, or fox to earth, with more terror of
mind than I to this retreat.

I slept none that night; the farther I was from the occasion of my
fright, the greater my apprehensions were, which is something contrary to
the nature of such things, and especially to the usual practice of all
creatures in fear; but I was so embarrassed with my own frightful ideas
of the thing, that I formed nothing but dismal imaginations to myself,
even though I was now a great way off. Sometimes I fancied it must be
the devil, and reason joined in with me in this supposition, for how
should any other thing in human shape come into the place? Where was the
vessel that brought them? What marks were there of any other footstep?
And how was it possible a man should come there? But then, to think that
Satan should take human shape upon him in such a place, where there could
be no manner of occasion for it, but to leave the print of his foot
behind him, and that even for no purpose too, for he could not be sure I
should see it--this was an amusement the other way. I considered that
the devil might have found out abundance of other ways to have terrified
me than this of the single print of a foot; that as I lived quite on the
other side of the island, he would never have been so simple as to leave
a mark in a place where it was ten thousand to one whether I should ever
see it or not, and in the sand too, which the first surge of the sea,
upon a high wind, would have defaced entirely. All this seemed
inconsistent with the thing itself and with all the notions we usually
entertain of the subtlety of the devil.

Abundance of such things as these assisted to argue me out of all
apprehensions of its being the devil; and I presently concluded then that
it must be some more dangerous creature--viz. that it must be some of the
savages of the mainland opposite who had wandered out to sea in their
canoes, and either driven by the currents or by contrary winds, had made
the island, and had been on shore, but were gone away again to sea; being