last.

I have not yet said a word of my four pets, which were two cats,
a dog, and a bird. You may guess how fond I was of them, for they
were all the friends left to me. I brought the dog and two cats
from the ship. The dog would fetch things for me at all times,
and by his bark, his whine, his growl, and his tricks, he would
all but talk to me; yet he could not give me thought for thought.

If I could but have had some one near me to find fault with, or
to find fault with me, what a treat it would have been! Now that
I had brought ink from the ship, I wrote down a sketch of each
day as it came; not so much to leave to those who might read it,
when I was dead and gone, as to get rid of my own thoughts, and
draw me from the fears which all day long dwelt on my mind, till
my head would ache with the weight of them.

I was a long way out of the course of ships: and oh, how dull it
was to be cast on this lone spot with no one to love, no one to
make me laugh, no one to make me weep, no one to make me think.
It was dull to roam, day by day, from the wood to the shore; and
from the shore back to the wood, and feed on my own thoughts all
the while.

So much for the sad view of my case; but like most things it had
a bright side as well as a dark one. For here was I safe on land,
while all the rest of the ship's crew were lost. Well, thought I,
God who shapes our ways, and led me by the hand then, can save me
from this state now, or send some one to be with me; true, I am
cast on a rough and rude part of the globe, but there are no