286 LYING LN AMBUSH.

becn alone; but it occurred to my thoughts, what call, what
oceasion, much less what necessity, I was in to go and dip my
hands in blood, to attack people who had neither done nor intended
ine any wrong—who as to me were innocent; and whose bar-
barous customs were their own disaster, being in them a token,
indeed, of God’s having left them, with the other nations of that
part of the world, to such stupidity and to such inhuman courses,
but did not call me to take upon me to be a judge of their
actions, much less an executioner of his justice: that whenever he
thought fit, he would take the cause into his own hands, and by
national vengeance punish them as a people for national crimes;
but that, in the meantime, it was none of my business: that it
was true Friday might justify it, because he was a declared enemy,
and in a state of war with those very particular people, and it was
lawful for him to attack them ; but I could not say the same with
respect to me. These things were so warmly pressed upon my
thoughts, all the way as I went, that I resolved I would only go
and place myself near them, that I might observe their barbarous
feast, and that I would act then as God should direct ; but that
unless something offered that was more a call to me than vet |
knew of, I would not meddle with them.

With this resolution [ entered the wood, and with all possible
wariness and silence, Friday following close at my heels, I marched
till I came to the skirt of the wood, on the side which was next to
them; only that one corner of the wood lay between me and them. —
Here I called softly to Friday, and showing him a great tree, which
was just at the corner of the wood, I bade him go to the tree and
bring me word if he could see there plainly what they were doing.
He did so, and came immediately back to me and told me they
might be plainly viewed there; that they were all about their fire,
eating the flesh of one of their prisoners; and that another lay
bound upon the sand, a little from them, which he said they would
kill next, and which fired all the very soul within me. He told
me it was not one of their nation, but one of the bearded men
whom he had told me of, that came to their country in the boat.
I was filled with horror at the very naming the white bearded man,
and going to the tree I saw plainly by my glass a white man wha