He stretched out his hands towards the sea that laid void before us, and laughed bitterly.
"Nay," says I, not to seem discouraged, though, indeed, my hopes were but slight; "it is not so impossible as you think. Take it that the day we left Trinidado the gale was in our favor, we could but have made twenty or thirty leagues at the utmost. Now say that the river to the north is three leagues broad, we may yet, by taking the current at our highest point, contrive to make our way across on some kind of raft, using a bough for paddle. There is nothing lacking to make us a raft."
"Well," says he, "say by good hap you cross the river and get on another isle—what then?"
"Then," says I, "will we make our way to the north of that island and cross to a third, or a fourth, after the same fashion, and so get on till we come to that part of Guiana due east of Trinidad, whence may we with no more difficulty cross the strait."
"Suppose, after all," says he, "that we get to Trinidado—what then? Shall we be better off there than we are here? We run a fair chance of being captured for slaves by the Portugals, to be sure."
"Also," says I, "run a fair chance of escaping them and being picked up by some English ship putting in as ours did to revictual."
"Allowing that your fondest hopes be realized," says he, "is our case mended? Is it worse to sleep away our lives here than to be taken into England as a raree show for men to laugh at and women to pity? No," says he, with more passion than he had yet shown; "no, I say! It is not better, but a hundred times worse, and I for one will never go back to be scorned for a silly fellow who could not hold his own."
It was not for me to reproach him, for had I not also abandoned myself under adversity? I was convinced, and so I am now, that a despair is a malady of mind as much as is ague a distemper of the body; and though men say one should not give way to despair, but should overcome it by an effort of will, yet, I say, that if the will be attacked by a great shock and enfeebled by misfortune, it is powerless to exercise its function. For such as suffer from this disease of the mind there is no help from within, but its only succor is from without. Wherefore, the kindly ministrations of a friend will do as much to restore health in this case as the help of a doctor in any other. For this reason I bore patiently with Sir Harry in his morose and sullen humors, and sought all I could to divert his spirit from brooding over misfortunes not to be undone. But I think all that I did in this way produced me more good than it did him; for whereas he continued despondent and dull, I grew more cheerful and humane. I waited upon him like a servant, and this service, with my pity to see a young, fine man so cast down, engendered a feeling of love in my breast such as I had never before felt for any man. Nay, I even looked to getting with him back to England, and seeing him married to Lady Biddy Fane, without any feeling of jealousy, being not only more gentle of heart, but more reasonable of mind.
At this time we stayed on high ground to the south of our territory, over against that part where we first found the pine-nut; not only because of the shade we got there from the sun, but by reason that it was adjacent to the stream of good water, and not far from the fen where the swine came to wallow, and where there was abundance of fowl and fruit good to eat.
While we were here, Sir Harry fell sick of a fever, bred partly, as I think, from his low, desponding spirit, and partly from the vapors that rose from the marshy valley below. When I found he could no longer sit upright and began to wander in his speech, I took him on my back, and, by stages of a dozen yards, carried him away from that unwholesome spot right down to the sea-shore, and there, finding an easy slope, I laid him down, and, as speedily as I could, set about making a kind of house to shield him from the sun. The night being fairly light, by dint of many journeys to and fro and much toil, I planted a dozen stakes in the sand, bending them down till they joined at the top, in the form of a great "A", and binding them to a cross tree, then I thatched this framework with those long and broad palmetto leaves of which I have spoken. Here he lay as comfortable as might be for one in his burning condition, the sea breeze passing through the shelter and tempering the heat of the sun.