His religion was only that of fear.

When the sea was violently agitated, when the storm howled, he prostrated himself with clasped hands; but it was no longer God whom he implored; it was the angry ocean, the thunder.

He sought to disarm the genius of evil.

The lightning having one day struck, not far from him, a date-palm, he worshipped the tree.

His perverted faith had at last terminated in idolatry.
This was, in substance, what Alexander Selkirk related to William Dampier; what solitude had done for this man, still so young, and formerly so intelligent; this was what had become of the despiser of men, when left to his own reason.
Dampier listened with the most profound attention, interrupting him in his narrative only by exclamations of interest or of pity.