, for want of some sustenance, as I cannot
describe; with such frequent throes and pangs of appetite as nothing but
the tortures of death can imitate; and in this condition I was when I
heard the seamen above cry out, 'A sail! a sail!' and halloo and jump
about as if they were distracted. I was not able to get off from the
bed, and my mistress much less; and my young master was so sick that I
thought he had been expiring; so we could not open the cabin door, or get
any account what it was that occasioned such confusion; nor had we had
any conversation with the ship's company for twelve days, they having
told us that they had not a mouthful of anything to eat in the ship; and
this they told us afterwards--they thought we had been dead. It was this
dreadful condition we were in when you were sent to save our lives; and
how you found us, sir, you know as well as I, and better too."

This was her own relation, and is such a distinct account of starving to
death, as, I confess, I never met with, and was exceeding instructive to
me. I am the rather apt to believe it to be a true account, because the
youth gave me an account of a good part of it; though I must own, not so
distinct and so feeling as the maid; and the rather, because it seems his
mother fed him at the price of her own life: but the poor maid, whose
constitution was stronger than that of her mistress, who was in years,
and a weakly woman too, might struggle harder with it; nevertheless she
might be supposed to feel the extremity something sooner than her
mistress, who might be allowed to keep the last bit something longer than
she parted with any to relieve her maid. No question, as the case is
here related, if our ship or some other had not so providentially met
them, but a few days more would have ended all their lives. I now return
to my disposition of things among the people. And, first, it is to be
observed here, that for many reasons I did not think fit to let them know
anything of the sloop I had framed, and which I thought of setting up
among them; for I found, at least at my first coming, such seeds of
division among them, that I saw plainly, had I set up the sloop, and left
it among them, they would, upon every light disgust, have separated, and
gone away from one another; or perhaps have turned pirates, and so made
the island a den of thieves, instead of a plantation of sober and
religious people, as I intended it; nor did I leave the two pieces of