To lie there helpless when Eva was expecting me, that would be the finishing touch.

I should rise a maniac if ever I rose at all.

More probably I would put one of my five big bullets into my own splitting head; it was no small temptation, lying there in a double agony, with the loaded weapon by my side.
Then sometimes I thought it was coming; and perhaps for an instant would be tossing in my hen-coop; then back once more.

And I swear that my physical and mental torments, here in my bed, would have been incomparably greater than anything I had endured on the sea, but for the saving grace of one sweet thought.

She lived! She lived! And the God who had taken care o me, a castaway, would surely deliver her also from the hands of murderers and thieves.