This, I confess, put new thoughts into my head for a while; but I harped upon the same string still; and all that day I was uneasy to put my project in execution.  Towards the evening the Scots merchant met me by accident in our walk about the town, and desired to speak with me:  “I believe,” said he, “I have put you off your good design; I have been a little concerned about it since; for I abhor the idol and idolatry as much as you can do.”—­“Truly,” said I, “you have put it off a little, as to the execution of it, but you have not put it all out of my thoughts; and, I believe, I shall do it still before I quit this place, though I were to be delivered up to them for satisfaction.”—­“No, no,” said he, “God forbid they should deliver you up to such a crew of monsters! they shall not do that neither; that would be murdering you indeed.”—­“Why,” said I, “how would they use me?”—­“Use you!” said he:  “I’ll tell you how they served a poor Russian, who affronted them in their worship just as you did, and whom they took prisoner, after they had lamed him with an arrow, that he could not run away:  they took him and stripped him stark naked, and set him upon the top of the idol monster, and stood all round him, and shot as many arrows into him as would stick over his whole body; and then they burnt him, and all the arrows sticking in him, as a sacrifice to the idol.”—­“And was this the same idol:”  said I.—­“Yes,” said he, “the very same.”—­“Well,” said I, “I will tell you a story.”  So I related the story of our men at Madagascar, and how they burnt and sacked the village there, and killed man, woman, and child, for their murdering one of our men, just as it is related before; and when I had done, I added, that I thought we ought to do so to this village.

He listened very attentively to the story; but when I talked of doing so to that village, said he, “You mistake very much; it was not this village, it was almost a hundred miles from this place; but it was the same idol, for they carry him about in procession all over the country.”—­“Well,” said I, “then that idol ought to be punished for it; and it shall,” said I, “if I live this night out.”

In a word, finding me resolute, he liked the design, and told me, I should not go alone, but he would go with me; but he would go first, and bring a stout fellow, one of his countrymen, to go also with us; “and one,” said he, “as famous for his zeal as you can desire any one to be against such devilish things as these.”  In a word, he brought me his comrade a Scotsman, whom he called Captain Richardson; and I gave him a full account of what I had seen, and also what I intended; and he told me readily, he would go with me, if it cost him his life.  So we agreed to go, only we three.  I had, indeed, proposed it to my partner, but he declined it.  He said, he was ready to assist me to the utmost, and upon all occasions, for my defence; but that this was an adventure quite out of his way:  so, I say, we resolved upon our work, only we three, and my man-servant, and to put it in execution that night about midnight, with all the secresy imaginable.