e I
lived there, and the increase I should probably have made if I had
stayed, I might have been worth a hundred thousand moidores; and what
business had I to leave a settled fortune, well-stocked plantation,
improving and increasing, to turn supercargo to Guinea, to fetch
Negroes, when patience and time would have so increased our stock at
home, that we could have bought them at our own doors, from those whose
business it was to fetch them? And though it had cost us something more,
yet the difference of that price was by no means worth saving at so
great a hazard.

But as this is ordinarily the fate of young heads, so reflection upon
the folly of it is as ordinarily the exercise of more years, or of the
dear-bought experience of time; and so it was with me now; and yet, so
deep had the mistake taken root in my temper, that I could not satisfy
myself in my station, but was continually poring upon the means and
possibility of my escape from this place; and that I may, with the
greater pleasure to the reader, bring on the remaining part of my story,
it may not be improper to give some account of my first conceptions on
the subject of this foolish scheme for my escape; and how, and upon what
foundation, I acted.

I am now to be supposed to be retired into my castle, after my late
voyage to the wreck, my frigate laid up, and secured under water as
usual, and my condition restored to what it was before: I had more
wealth, indeed, than I had before, but was not at all the richer; for I
had no more use for it than the Indians of Peru had before the Spaniards
came thither.

It was one of the nights in the rainy season in March, the
four-and-twentieth year of my first setting foot in this island of
solitariness, I was lying in my bed or hammock, awake, and very well in
health, had no pain, no distemper, no uneasiness of body, no, nor any
uneasiness of mind more than ordinary, but could by no means close my
eyes, that is, so as to sleep; no, not a wink all night long, otherwise
than as follows:

It is as impossible as needless to set down the innumerable crowd of
thoughts that whirled through that great thoroughfare of the brain, the
memory, in this night's time: I ran over the whole history of my life in
miniature, or by abridgment, as I may call it, to my coming to this
island; and also of that part of my life since I came to this island; in
my reflections upon the state of my case, since I came on shore on this
island; I