each, and four or five smaller
bullets, about the size of pistol bullets; and the fowling-piece I loaded
with near a handful of swan-shot of the largest size; I also loaded my
pistols with about four bullets each; and, in this posture, well provided
with ammunition for a second and third charge, I prepared myself for my
expedition.

After I had thus laid the scheme of my design, and in my imagination put
it in practice, I continually made my tour every morning to the top of
the hill, which was from my castle, as I called it, about three miles or
more, to see if I could observe any boats upon the sea, coming near the
island, or standing over towards it; but I began to tire of this hard
duty, after I had for two or three months constantly kept my watch, but
came always back without any discovery; there having not, in all that
time, been the least appearance, not only on or near the shore, but on
the whole ocean, so far as my eye or glass could reach every way.

As long as I kept my daily tour to the hill, to look out, so long also I
kept up the vigour of my design, and my spirits seemed to be all the
while in a suitable frame for so outrageous an execution as the killing
twenty or thirty naked savages, for an offence which I had not at all
entered into any discussion of in my thoughts, any farther than my
passions were at first fired by the horror I conceived at the unnatural
custom of the people of that country, who, it seems, had been suffered by
Providence, in His wise disposition of the world, to have no other guide
than that of their own abominable and vitiated passions; and consequently
were left, and perhaps had been so for some ages, to act such horrid
things, and receive such dreadful customs, as nothing but nature,
entirely abandoned by Heaven, and actuated by some hellish degeneracy,
could have run them into. But now, when, as I have said, I began to be
weary of the fruitless excursion which I had made so long and so far
every morning in vain, so my opinion of the action itself began to alter;
and I began, with cooler and calmer thoughts, to consider what I was
going to engage in; what authority or call I had to pretend to be judge
and executioner upon these men as criminals, whom Heaven had thought fit
for so many ages to suffer unpunished to go on, and to be as it were the
executioners of His judgments one upon another; how far these people were
offenders against me, and what right I had to engage in the qu