They seriously believed that death was approaching.

A terrible contemplation it was, after all they had passed through; the perils of shipwreck, famine, thirst; the danger of being drowned; one of them escaping from a hideous reptile; another from the coils of a serpent; a third from having his skull cracked in by a fallen fruit, and afterwards split open by the beak of an angry bird.

Now, after all these hairbreadth perils and escapes, to be poisoned by eating the flesh of this very bird--to die in such simple and apparently causeless fashion; though it may seem almost ridiculous, it was to them not a whit the less appalling.

And appalled they were, as time passed, and they felt themselves growing worse instead of better.

They were surely poisoned--surely going to die..