I cannot explain, by any possible energy of words, what a strange longing or hankering [hanker〈v.〉向往，渴望] of desires I felt in my soul upon this sight, breaking out sometimes thus: “Oh that there had been but one or two, nay, or but one soul saved out of this 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 the 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! “Oh that it had been but one!” I believe I repeated the words, “Oh 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 would press the palms of my hands, that if I had had any soft thing in my hand, it would have crushed it involuntarily [involuntarily〈adv.〉不自覺地]; 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 to them is to describe the fact, which was even 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, realising 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, forbade 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 pockets 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 board that might be useful to me. But that did not altogether press me so much as the possibility that there might be yet some living creature on board, whose life I might not only save, but might, by saving that life, comfort my own to the last degree. And this thought clung so to my heart, that I could not be quiet night or day, but I must venture out in my boat on board this wreck; and committing the rest to God’s providence, I thought, the impression was so strong upon my mind that it could not be resisted, that it must come from some invisible direction, and that I should be wanting to myself if I did not go.