An extraordinary attraction, a semi-spiritual exaltation, I think.

That cave mouth might have been a magnet drawing my soul.

With my body I should have been afraid, as I daresay I was, for our circumstances were sufficiently desperate.

Here we were, castaways upon an island, probably uncharted, one of thousands in the recesses of a vast ocean, from which we had little chance of escape.

More, having offended the religious instincts of the primeval inhabitants of that island, we had been forced to flee to a rocky mountain in the centre of a lake, where, after the food we had brought with us by accident was consumed, we should no doubt be forced to choose between death by starvation, or, if we attempted to retreat, at the hands of justly infuriated savages.