Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and then made for England. Cavendish, utterly broken, spent most of
the time in his cabin, composing a vindication of his actions, writing
his will and contemplating suicide:
. . . amongst such hellhounds my spirit was clean spent, wishing
myself upon any desert place in the world, there to die, rather than
thus basely to return home again, which course I had put in execu-
tion, had I found an island which the charts make to be in 8 degrees
to the southwards of the line, I swear to you I sought it well with dili-
gence, meaning, if I had found it, to have there ended my unfortunate
life.
20
Did he, eventually, commit suicide or did he die simply of a lack
of desire to remain alive? We shall never know. Somewhere out in
the Atlantic his body was consigned to the ocean that had, in the end,
defeated him.
