116 JOURNEY TO THE SHORES 



vinced of the necessity of such a dreadful 

 act, to take the whole responsibility upon 

 myself ; and immediately upon Michel's 

 coming up, I put an end to his life by 

 shooting him through the head with a pis- 

 tol. Had my own life alone been threat- 

 ened, I would not have purchased it by 

 such a measure ; but I considered myself 

 as entrusted also with the protection of 

 Hepburn's, a man, who, by his humane at- 

 tentions and devotedness, had so endeared 

 himself to me, that I felt more anxiety for 

 his safety than for my own. Michel had 

 gathered no tripe de roche, and it was evi- 

 dent to us that he had halted for the pur- 

 pose of putting his gun in ^rder, with the 

 intention of attacking us, perhaps, whilst 

 we were in the act of encamping. * 



I have dwelt in the preceding part of the 

 narrative upon many circumstances of Mi- 

 chel's conduct, not for the purpose of aggra- 

 vating his crime, but to put the reader in 

 possession of the reasons that influenced me 

 in depriving a fellow-creature of life. Up 

 to the period of his return to the tent, his 



