Mr Webber had finished it, without marking the least impatience.  I must confess I admired his courage, and was not a little pleased to observe the extent of the confidence he put in me; for he placed his whole safety in the declarations I had uniformly made to those who solicited his death, That I had always been a friend to them all, and would continue so, unless they gave me cause to act otherwise; that as to their inhuman treatment of our people, I should think no more of it, the transaction having happened long ago, and when I was not present; but that, if ever they made a second attempt of that kind, they might rest assured of feeling the weight of my resentment.[144]

[Footnote 144:  Here Captain Cook acted wisely; and, indeed, throughout the whole transaction, his conduct merits the highest applause.  To resist the solicitations of envy and revenge, where acquiescence would have proved so availing to his reputation, and so secure in its display, implied a conscientious regard to an invisible authority, which must ever be allowed to constitute a feature of excellence in any man to whom power is committed.  His threatening is not to be considered as any exception to what is now said in his praise, being, in fact, a beneficial intimation calculated to secure subjection to a necessary law.  Here it may not be amiss to remark, that savages, little as some men think of them, are possessed of all the faculties of human nature; and that conscience, that principle, which, more than reason, characterizes our species, has as true and as efficient an existence in their breasts.  Now this always respects a superior power, and is the source of that indescribable dread of some opposing and awful agency, which never fails to visit the transgressor of its dictates.  We must not, however, ascribe to it every apprehension of danger with which the mind is occasionally disturbed.  There is a sort of fear of evil which seems common to us with the lower animals, and which cannot therefore be imagined to have any connection with moral delinquency.  This latter, it is probable, was all that Kahoora experienced in his first interview with Cook after the massacre; and hence his apprehensions would easily be subdued by the assurances which that gentleman made him.  In fact, from the facility of his confidence, we may almost certainly infer his consciousness of innocence, notwithstanding his share in the commission of the deed.  This implies no inconsistency, as every thinking person will at once perceive; for it must be remembered, that there is no evidence whatever as to any design or premeditated plan on the part of the savages.  Had his dread been of the former kind, it is scarcely conceivable that the utmost assurances of indemnity which Cook could give, would have produced so unaffected a manifestation of ease as is described.—­E.]