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 my affrighted imagination represented things to
me in, how many wild ideas were found 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 had called
a door, I cannot remember; no, nor could I remember the next morning;
for never frightened hare fled to cover, or fox to earth, with more
terror of mind than I to this retreat.

I slept none that night; the farther I was from the occasion of my
fright, the greater my apprehensions were; which is something contrary
to the nature of such things, and especially to the usual practice of
all creatures in fear; but I was so embarrassed with my own frightful
ideas of the thing, that I formed nothing but dismal imaginations to
myself, even though I was now a great way off it. Sometimes I fancied it
must be the Devil, and reason joined in with me upon this supposition;
for how should any other thing in human shape come into the place? Where
was the vessel that brought them? What marks were there of any other
footsteps? And how was it possible a man should come there? But then to
think that Satan should take human shape upon him in such a place, where
there could be no manner of occasion for it, but to leave the print of
his foot behind him, and that even for no purpose too, for he could not
be sure I should see it,--this was an amusement the other way. I
considered that the Devil might have found out abundance of other ways
to have terrified me than this of the single print of a foot; that as I
lived quite on the other side of the island, he would never have been so
simple as to leave a mark in a place where it was ten thousand to one
whether I should ever see it or not, and in the sand too, which the
first surge of the sea, upon a high wind, would have defaced entirely:
all this seemed inconsistent with the thing itself, and with all the
notions we usually entertain of the subtilty of the Devil.

Abundance of such things as these assisted to argue me out of all
apprehensions of its being the Devil; and I presently conc