sometimes thus: "O that there had been but one or two, nay,
but one soul saved out of the ship, to have escaped to me, that I might
but have had one companion, one fellow-creature to have spoken to me,
and to have conversed with!" In all the time of my solitary life, I
never felt so earnest, so strong a desire after the society of my
fellow-creatures, or so deep a regret at want of it.

There are some secret moving springs in the affections, which, when
they are set a going by some object in view, or be it some object though
not in view, yet rendered present to the mind by the power of
imagination, that motion carries out the soul by its impetuosity to such
violent eager embracings of the object, that the absence of it is
insupportable.

Such were these earnest wishings, "That but one man had been saved! O
that it had been but one!" I believe I repeated the words, "O that it
had been but one!" a thousand times; and my desires were so moved by it,
that when I spoke the words, my hands would clinch together, and my
fingers press the palms of my hands, that if I had had any soft thing in
my hand, it would have crushed it involuntarily; and my teeth in my head
would strike together, and set against one another so strong, that for
some time I could not part them again.

Let the naturalists explain these things, and the reason and manner of
them: all I can say of them is, to describe the fact, which was ever
surprising to me when I found it, though I knew not from what it should
proceed; it was doubtless the effect of ardent wishes, and of strong
ideas formed in my mind, realizing the comfort which the conversation of
one of my fellow-christians would have been to me.

But it was not to be; either their fate, or mine, or both, forbad it;
for till the last year of my being on this island, I never knew whether
any were saved out of that ship, or no; and had only the affliction some
days after to see the corpse of a drowned boy come on shore, at the end
of the island which was next the shipwreck: he had on no clothes but a
seaman's waistcoat, a pair of open kneed linen drawers, and a blue linen
shirt; but nothing to direct me so much as to guess what nation he was
of: he had nothing in his pocket but two pieces of eight, and a
tobacco-pipe; the last was to me of ten times more value than the first.

It was now calm, and I had a great mind to venture out in my boat to
this wreck, not doubting but I might find something on boa