human
It would have been merciful to kill him there in the boat; hunger and thirst of the body are nothing, are soon over with. But think of the surpassing cruelty of saving him! Great pains were taken to that end; winds were manipulated, a ship was selected and driven from her course; it was as if the elements had conspired together and the whole machinery of the universe had paused a moment for the consummation of the act. On a certain morning he was sighted from the quarter-deck of the _Vanguard_; an hour later he was picked up, half dead from thirst, and babbling of an island—as mad as a hatter, of course, since the nearest land was the Marquesas, five hundred miles away