I felt
doubtful whether some minds, growing weak with fasting and exposure and
having such a terrific idea to dwell upon in secret, might not magnify it
until it got to have an awful attraction about it. This was not a new
thought of mine, for it had grown out of my reading. However, it came
over me stronger than it had ever done before--as it had reason for
doing--in the boat, and on the fourth day I decided that I would bring
out into the light that unformed fear which must have been more or less
darkly in every brain among us. Therefore, as a means of beguiling the
time and inspiring hope, I gave them the best summary in my power of
Bligh's voyage of more than three thousand miles, in an open boat, after
the Mutiny of the Bounty, and of the wonderful preservation of that
boat's crew. They listened throughout with great interest, and I
concluded by telling them, that, in my opinion, the happiest circumstance
in the whole narrative was, that Bligh, who was no delicate man either,
had solemnly placed it on record therein that he was sure and certain
that under no conceivable circumstances whatever would that emaciated
party, who had gone through all the pains of famine, have preyed on one
another.
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