, working away in the hold,
and lowering down the rigging from aloft, when there was a loud
explosion, and the deck of the vessel, with all on board, was lifted up
and blown into the air! Not a human being on board escaped. Fragments
of the wreck and mangled bodies came falling thick around, while flames
burst out on every side from the hull, the scene of the late atrocity.

The chief was very angry at the loss of so much property, but seemed in
no way to regret the lives of so many of his subjects.

I took occasion to tell him that the catastrophe was a judgment on him
for the number of murders and the robbery he had committed.

He replied that he did not understand what I meant--that white men had
often come to those islands in their ships, and had kidnapped his
people, or shot them down with their guns, or beaten them, for some
trifling misunderstanding or theft of little importance they might have
committed, and that he was only treating them as other white people had
treated his countrymen.

No reasoning that I was able to use after this could convince him that
he had acted wrongly. Indeed I knew that there was too much truth in
his assertion; and much have those navigators to answer for who have
acted unfairly towards savages, when those savages, following the law of
their untutored nature, have retaliated on subsequent voyagers with a
tenfold measure of vengeance.

After this occurrence, I was always seeking an opportunity to escape
from this blood-stained spot of earth. Whichever way I turned had been
a scene of murder, and I loathed the sight of the sanguinary perpetrator
of so many atrocities.

I might employ many an hour in describing the dreadful customs and
superstitions of these people. Every day my desire to escape from them
increased. Three or four vessels in the course of the next year called
off the island, but the crews seemed to be cautious; and, at all events,
no attempt was made to surprise them. As each appeared, I found myself
narrowly watched, so I had no opportunity of communicating with them.

I had now for some time been looked upon as a sane man, and had employed
myself in working in various ways for the chief. It at last struck me,
that if I were again to feign madness I might obtain greater liberty.
On putting my idea into execution, I found that it had the desired
effect; and I was allowed from that time forward to go about wherever I
liked, and to pry into people's houses