and in my imagination
put it in practice, I continually made my tour every morning up 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 not on the whole ocean, so far as my eyes or glasses could reach
every way.

As long as I kept up 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 a discussion of in my thoughts, any further 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 for some ages, to act such
horrid things, and receive such dreadful customs, as nothing but nature,
entirely abandoned of 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 it
was 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 upon one another; also,
how far these people were offenders against me, and what right I had to
engage in the quarrel of that blood, which they shed promiscuously one
upon another. I debated this very often with myself thus: How do I know
what God himself judges in this particular case? It is certain these
people do not commit this as a crime; it is not against their own
consciences reproving, or their light reproaching them. They do not know
it to be an offence, and