aisins, and which I never failed to preserve
very carefully, as the best and most agreeable dainty of my whole diet;
and indeed they were not agreeable only, but physical, wholesome,
nourishing, and refreshing to the last degree.

As this was also about half way between my other habitation and the
place where I had laid up my boat, I generally staid and lay here in my
way thither; for I used frequently to visit my boat, and I kept all
things about or belonging to her in very good order: sometimes I went
out in her to divert myself, but no more hazardous voyages would I go,
nor scarce ever above a stone's cast or two from the shore, I was so
apprehensive of being hurried out of my knowledge again by the currents,
or winds, or any other accident. But now I come to a new scene of
my life.

It happened one day about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly
surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was
very plain to be seen in the sand: I stood like one thunder-struck, or
as if I had seen an apparition; I listened, I looked round me, I could
hear nothing, nor see any thing; I went up to a rising ground to look
farther: I went up the shore, and down the shore, but it was all one, I
could see no other impression but that one; I went to it again to see if
there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy; but
there was no room for that, for there was exactly the very print of a
foot, toes, heel, and every part of a foot; how it came thither I knew
not, nor could in the least imagine. But after innumerable fluttering
thoughts, like a man perfectly confused, and out of myself, I came home
to my mortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but
terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three
steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a
distance to be a man; nor is it possible to describe how many various
shapes an affrighted imagination represented things to me in; how many
wild ideas were formed every 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 called a
door, I cannot remember; for never frighted hare fled to cover, or fox
to earth, with more terror of mind than I to this retr