"Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay--cold, fog, tempests, diesease, exile, and death--death skulking in the air"(68).
The colonizers (the ship crew) in this novel knew what they were getting into, knew their role in their conquest. The place they are going is depicted as a horrible place that promises little else other than trouble; but the trouble is still worth their goal, colonization. Colonization of a barren and savage "wilderness" that, as the sentence implies early on, is not the only "wilderness" to colonize on their to-do list. As described, this particular "wilderness", and probably any other land in need of their colonizing, is seen as a dark and menacing place full of savages, something that can and needs to be controled, by them of course. But this land has terrible things that may lead them to their death, which may already be "skulking in the air". So why stick around and colonize, then? Well, these men are sailors, bound together by "the bond of the sea"(65), and the sea is their home. They have little to live for and probably needed a booster upper in their lives. "Taming" the savages gives them this booster upper, and maybe even great resources.
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