abominable lewdness, was the stated practice of the ship's crew;
adding to it, that with the most unsufferable boasts of their own
courage, they were, generally speaking, the most complete cowards
that I ever met with."--Page 7.

"All the seamen in a body came up to the rail of the quarter-deck,
where the captain was walking with some of his officers, and
appointing the boatswain to speak for them, he went up, and falling
on his knees to the captain, begged of him in the humblest manner
possible, to receive the four men on board again, offering to answer
for their fidelity, or to have them kept in chains, till they came
to Lisbon, and there to be delivered up to justice, rather than, as
they said, to have them left, to be murdered by savages, or devoured
by wild beasts. It was a great while ere the captain took any notice
of them, but when he did, he ordered the boatswain to be seized, and
threatened to bring him to the capstan for speaking for them....
Upon this severity, one of the seamen, bolder than the rest, but
still with all possible respect to the captain, besought his honour,
as he called him, that he would give leave to some more of them to
go on shore, and die with their companions, or, if possible, to
assist them to resist the barbarians."--Page 18.

Now the first passage we have quoted about the cowardice, &c., of the
Portuguese crew is not in keeping with the second passage, which shows the
men as "wishing to die with their companions"; but so actual is the scene
of the seamen "in a body coming up to the rail of the quarter-deck," that
we cannot but believe the thing happened so, just as we believe in all the
thousand little details of the imaginary narrative of "Robinson Crusoe."
This feat of the imagination Defoe strengthens in the most artful manner,
by putting in the mouths of his characters various reflections to