things as real apparitions, spectres, or walking of people after
they are dead; or whether there is anything in the stories they
tell us of that kind more than the product of vapours, sick minds,
and wandering fancies: but this I know, that my imagination worked
up to such a height, and brought me into such excess of vapours, or
what else I may call it, that I actually supposed myself often upon
the spot, at my old castle, behind the trees; saw my old Spaniard,
Friday's father, and the reprobate sailors I left upon the island;
nay, I fancied I talked with them, and looked at them steadily,
though I was broad awake, as at persons just before me; and this I
did till I often frightened myself with the images my fancy
represented to me. One time, in my sleep, I had the villainy of
the three pirate sailors so lively related to me by the first
Spaniard, and Friday's father, that it was surprising: they told
me how they barbarously attempted to murder all the Spaniards, and
that they set fire to the provisions they had laid up, on purpose
to distress and starve them; things that I had never heard of, and
that, indeed, were never all of them true in fact: but it was so
warm in my imagination, and so realised to me, that, to the hour I
saw them, I could not be persuaded but that it was or would be
true; also how I resented it, when the Spaniard complained to me;
and how I brought them to justice, tried them, and ordered them all
three to be hanged. What there was really in this shall be seen in
its place; for however I came to form such things in my dream, and
what secret converse of spirits injected it, yet there was, I say,
much of it true. I own that this dream had nothing in it literally
and specifically true; but the general part was so true--the base;
villainous behaviour of these three hardened rogues was such, and
had been so much worse than all I can describe, that the dream had
too much similitude of the fact; and as I would afterwards have