But my clergyman had not done yet; his thoughts hung continually upon the conversion of the thirty-seven savages, and fain he would have staid upon the island to have undertaken it; but I convinced him, first, that his undertaking was impracticable in itself; and secondly, that, perhaps, I could put it into a way of being done, in his absence, to his satisfaction; of which by and by.

Having thus brought the affair of the island to a narrow compass, I was preparing to go on board the ship when the young man, whom I had taken out of the famished ship’s company, came to me, and told me, he understood I had a clergyman with me, and that I had caused the Englishmen to be married to the savages whom they called wives; that he had a match too, which he desired might be finished before I went, between two Christians, which he hoped would not be disagreeable to me.

I knew this must be the young woman who was his mother’s servant, for there was no other Christian woman on the island.  So I began to persuade him not to do any thing of that kind rashly, or because he found himself in this solitary circumstance.  I represented that he had some considerable substance in the world, and good friends, as I understood by himself, and by his maid also; that the maid was not only poor, and a servant, but was unequal to him, she being twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, and he not above seventeen or eighteen; that he might very probably, with my assistance, make a remove from this wilderness, and come into his own country again, and that then it would be a thousand to one but he would repent his choice, and the dislike of that circumstance might be disadvantageous to both.  I was going to say more, but he interrupted me, smiling; and told me, with a great deal of modesty, that I mistook in my guesses; that he had nothing of that kind in his thoughts, his present circumstances being melancholy and disconsolate enough; and he was very glad to hear that I had some thoughts of putting them in a way to see their own country again; and that nothing should have set him upon staying there, but that the voyage I was going was so exceeding long and hazardous, and would carry him quite out of the reach of all his friends; that he had nothing to desire of me, but that I would settle him in some little property of the island where he was; give him a servant or two, and some few necessaries, and he would settle himself here like a planter, waiting the good time when, if ever I returned to England, I would redeem him, and hoped I would not be unmindful of him when I came to England; that he would give me some letters to his friends in London, to let them know how good I had been to him, and what part of the world, and what circumstances I had left him in; and he promised me, that whenever I redeemed him, the plantation, and all the improvements he had made upon it, let the value be what it would, should be wholly mine.