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Robinson Crusoe
CHAPTER III - WRECKED ON A DESERT ISLAND
AFTER this stop, we made on to the southward continually for ten or
twelve days, living very sparingly on our provisions, which began to
abate very much, and going no oftener to the shore than we were
obliged to for fresh water. My design in this was to make the river
Gambia or Senegal, that is to say anywhere about the Cape de Verde,
where I was in hopes to meet with some European ship; and if I did
not, I knew not what course I had to take, but to seek for the
islands, or perish there among the negroes. I knew that all the ships
from Europe, which sailed either to the coast of Guinea or to Brazil,
or to the East Indies, made this cape, or those islands; and, in a
word, I put the whole of my fortune upon this single point, either
that I must meet with some ship or must perish.
When I had pursued this resolution about ten days longer, as I have
said, I began to see that the land was inhabited; and in two or three
places, as we sailed by, we saw people stand upon the shore to look at
us; we could also perceive they were quite black and naked. I was
once inclined to have gone on shore to them; but Xury was my better
counsellor, and said to me, "No go, no go." However, I hauled in
nearer the shore that I might talk to them, and I found they ran along
the shore by me a good way. I observed they had no weapons in their
hand, except one, who had a long slender stick, which Xury said was a
lance, and that they could throw them a great way with good aim; so I
kept at a distance, but talked with them by signs as well as I could;
and particularly made signs for something to eat: they beckoned to me
to stop my boat, and they would fetch me some meat. Upon this I
lowered the top of my sail and lay by, and two of them ran up into the
country, and in less than half-an- hour came back, and brought with
them two pieces of dried flesh and some corn, such as is the produce
of their country; but we neither knew what the one or the other was;
however, we were willing to accept it, but how to come at it was our
next dispute, for I would not venture on shore to them, and they were
as much afraid of us; but they took a safe way for us all, for they
brought it to the shore and laid it down, and went and stood a great
way off till we fetched it on board, and then came close to us again.
We made signs of thanks to them, for we had nothing to make them
amends; but an opportunity offered that very instant to oblige them
wonderfully; for while we were lying by the shore came two mighty
creatures, one pursuing the other (as we took it) with great fury from
the mountains towards the sea; whether it was the male pursuing the
female, or whether they were in sport or in rage, we could not tell,
any more than we could tell whether it was usual or strange, but I
believe it was the latter; because, in the first place, those ravenous
creatures seldom appear but in the night; and, in the second place, we
found the people terribly frighted, especially the women. The man
that had the lance or dart did not fly from them, but the rest did;
however, as the two creatures ran directly into the water, they did
not offer to fall upon any of the negroes, but plunged themselves into
the sea, and swam about, as if they had come for their diversion; at
last one of them began to come nearer our boat than at first I
expected; but I lay ready for him, for I had loaded my gun with all
possible expedition, and bade Xury load both the others. As soon as
he came fairly within my reach, I fired, and shot him directly in the
head; immediately he sank down into the water, but rose instantly, and
plunged up and down, as if he were struggling for life, and so indeed
he was; he immediately made to the shore; but between the wound, which
was his mortal hurt, and the strangling of the water, he died just
before he reached the shore.
It is impossible to express the astonishment of these poor creatures
at the noise and fire of my gun: some of them were even ready to die
for fear, and fell down as dead with the very terror; but when they
saw the creature dead, and sunk in the water, and that I made signs to
them to come to the shore, they took heart and came, and began to
search for the creature. I found him by his blood staining the water;
and by the help of a rope, which I slung round him, and gave the
negroes to haul, they dragged him on shore, and found that it was a
most curious leopard, spotted, and fine to an admirable degree; and
the negroes held up their hands with admiration, to think what it was
I had killed him with.
The other creature, frighted with the flash of fire and the noise of
the gun, swam on shore, and ran up directly to the mountains from
whence they came; nor could I, at that distance, know what it was. I
found quickly the negroes wished to eat the flesh of this creature, so
I was willing to have them take it as a favour from me; which, when I
made signs to them that they might take him, they were very thankful
for. Immediately they fell to work with him; and though they had no
knife, yet, with a sharpened piece of wood, they took off his skin as
readily, and much more readily, than we could have done with a knife.
They offered me some of the flesh, which I declined, pointing out that
I would give it them; but made signs for the skin, which they gave me
very freely, and brought me a great deal more of their provisions,
which, though I did not understand, yet I accepted. I then made signs
to them for some water, and held out one of my jars to them, turning
it bottom upward, to show that it was empty, and that I wanted to have
it filled. They called immediately to some of their friends, and
there came two women, and brought a great vessel made of earth, and
burnt, as I supposed, in the sun, this they set down to me, as before,
and I sent Xury on shore with my jars, and filled them all three. The
women were as naked as the men.
I was now furnished with roots and corn, such as it was, and water;
and leaving my friendly negroes, I made forward for about eleven days
more, without offering to go near the shore, till I saw the land run
out a great length into the sea, at about the distance of four or five
leagues before me; and the sea being very calm, I kept a large offing
to make this point. At length, doubling the point, at about two
leagues from the land, I saw plainly land on the other side, to
seaward; then I concluded, as it was most certain indeed, that this
was the Cape de Verde, and those the islands called, from thence, Cape
de Verde Islands. However, they were at a great distance, and I could
not well tell what I had best to do; for if I should be taken with a
fresh of wind, I might neither reach one or other.
In this dilemma, as I was very pensive, I stepped into the cabin and
sat down, Xury having the helm; when, on a sudden, the boy cried out,
"Master, master, a ship with a sail!" and the foolish boy was frighted
out of his wits, thinking it must needs be some of his master's ships
sent to pursue us, but I knew we were far enough out of their reach.
I jumped out of the cabin, and immediately saw, not only the ship, but
that it was a Portuguese ship; and, as I thought, was bound to the
coast of Guinea, for negroes. But, when I observed the course she
steered, I was soon convinced they were bound some other way, and did
not design to come any nearer to the shore; upon which I stretched out
to sea as much as I could, resolving to speak with them if possible.
With all the sail I could make, I found I should not be able to come
in their way, but that they would be gone by before I could make any
signal to them: but after I had crowded to the utmost, and began to
despair, they, it seems, saw by the help of their glasses that it was
some European boat, which they supposed must belong to some ship that
was lost; so they shortened sail to let me come up. I was encouraged
with this, and as I had my patron's ancient on board, I made a waft of
it to them, for a signal of distress, and fired a gun, both which they
saw; for they told me they saw the smoke, though they did not hear the
gun. Upon these signals they very kindly brought to, and lay by for
me; and in about three hours; time I came up with them.
They asked me what I was, in Portuguese, and in Spanish, and in
French, but I understood none of them; but at last a Scotch sailor,
who was on board, called to me: and I answered him, and told him I was
an Englishman, that I had made my escape out of slavery from the
Moors, at Sallee; they then bade me come on board, and very kindly
took me in, and all my goods.
It was an inexpressible joy to me, which any one will believe, that I
was thus delivered, as I esteemed it, from such a miserable and almost
hopeless condition as I was in; and I immediately offered all I had to
the captain of the ship, as a return for my deliverance; but he
generously told me he would take nothing from me, but that all I had
should be delivered safe to me when I came to the Brazils. "For,"
says he, "I have saved your life on no other terms than I would be
glad to be saved myself: and it may, one time or other, be my lot to
be taken up in the same condition. Besides," said he, "when I carry
you to the Brazils, so great a way from your own country, if I should
take from you what you have, you will be starved there, and then I
only take away that life I have given. No, no," says he: "Seignior
Inglese" (Mr. Englishman), "I will carry you thither in charity, and
those things will help to buy your subsistence there, and your passage
home again."
As he was charitable in this proposal, so he was just in the
performance to a tittle; for he ordered the seamen that none should
touch anything that I had: then he took everything into his own
possession, and gave me back an exact inventory of them, that I might
have them, even to my three earthen jars.
As to my boat, it was a very good one; and that he saw, and told me he
would buy it of me for his ship's use; and asked me what I would have
for it? I told him he had been so generous to me in everything that I
could not offer to make any price of the boat, but left it entirely to
him: upon which he told me he would give me a note of hand to pay me
eighty pieces of eight for it at Brazil; and when it came there, if
any one offered to give more, he would make it up. He offered me also
sixty pieces of eight more for my boy Xury, which I was loth to take;
not that I was unwilling to let the captain have him, but I was very
loth to sell the poor boy's liberty, who had assisted me so faithfully
in procuring my own. However, when I let him know my reason, he owned
it to be just, and offered me this medium, that he would give the boy
an obligation to set him free in ten years, if he turned Christian:
upon this, and Xury saying he was willing to go to him, I let the
captain have him.
We had a very good voyage to the Brazils, and I arrived in the Bay de
Todos los Santos, or All Saints' Bay, in about twenty-two days after.
And now I was once more delivered from the most miserable of all
conditions of life; and what to do next with myself I was to consider.
The generous treatment the captain gave me I can never enough
remember: he would take nothing of me for my passage, gave me twenty
ducats for the leopard's skin, and forty for the lion's skin, which I
had in my boat, and caused everything I had in the ship to be
punctually delivered to me; and what I was willing to sell he bought
of me, such as the case of bottles, two of my guns, and a piece of the
lump of beeswax - for I had made candles of the rest: in a word, I
made about two hundred and twenty pieces of eight of all my cargo; and
with this stock I went on shore in the Brazils.
I had not been long here before I was recommended to the house of a
good honest man like himself, who had an INGENIO, as they call it
(that is, a plantation and a sugar-house). I lived with him some
time, and acquainted myself by that means with the manner of planting
and making of sugar; and seeing how well the planters lived, and how
they got rich suddenly, I resolved, if I could get a licence to settle
there, I would turn planter among them: resolving in the meantime to
find out some way to get my money, which I had left in London,
remitted to me. To this purpose, getting a kind of letter of
naturalisation, I purchased as much land that was uncured as my money
would reach, and formed a plan for my plantation and settlement; such
a one as might be suitable to the stock which I proposed to myself to
receive from England.
I had a neighbour, a Portuguese, of Lisbon, but born of English
parents, whose name was Wells, and in much such circumstances as I
was. I call him my neighbour, because his plantation lay next to
mine, and we went on very sociably together. My stock was but low, as
well as his; and we rather planted for food than anything else, for
about two years. However, we began to increase, and our land began to
come into order; so that the third year we planted some tobacco, and
made each of us a large piece of ground ready for planting canes in
the year to come. But we both wanted help; and now I found, more than
before, I had done wrong in parting with my boy Xury.
But, alas! for me to do wrong that never did right, was no great
wonder. I hail no remedy but to go on: I had got into an employment
quite remote to my genius, and directly contrary to the life I
delighted in, and for which I forsook my father's house, and broke
through all his good advice. Nay, I was coming into the very middle
station, or upper degree of low life, which my father advised me to
before, and which, if I resolved to go on with, I might as well have
stayed at home, and never have fatigued myself in the world as I had
done; and I used often to say to myself, I could have done this as
well in England, among my friends, as have gone five thousand miles
off to do it among strangers and savages, in a wilderness, and at such
a distance as never to hear from any part of the world that had the
least knowledge of me.
In this manner I used to look upon my condition with the utmost
regret. I had nobody to converse with, but now and then this
neighbour; no work to be done, but by the labour of my hands; and I
used to say, I lived just like a man cast away upon some desolate
island, that had nobody there but himself. But how just has it been -
and how should all men reflect, that when they compare their present
conditions with others that are worse, Heaven may oblige them to make
the exchange, and be convinced of their former felicity by their
experience - I say, how just has it been, that the truly solitary life
I reflected on, in an island of mere desolation, should be my lot, who
had so often unjustly compared it with the life which I then led, in
which, had I continued, I had in all probability been exceeding
prosperous and rich.
I was in some degree settled in my measures for carrying on the
plantation before my kind friend, the captain of the ship that took me
up at sea, went back - for the ship remained there, in providing his
lading and preparing for his voyage, nearly three months - when
telling him what little stock I had left behind me in London, he gave
me this friendly and sincere advice:- "Seignior Inglese," says he (for
so he always called me), "if you will give me letters, and a
procuration in form to me, with orders to the person who has your
money in London to send your effects to Lisbon, to such persons as I
shall direct, and in such goods as are proper for this country, I will
bring you the produce of them, God willing, at my return; but, since
human affairs are all subject to changes and disasters, I would have
you give orders but for one hundred pounds sterling, which, you say,
is half your stock, and let the hazard be run for the first; so that,
if it come safe, you may order the rest the same way, and, if it
miscarry, you may have the other half to have recourse to for your
supply."
This was so wholesome advice, and looked so friendly, that I could not
but be convinced it was the best course I could take; so I accordingly
prepared letters to the gentlewoman with whom I had left my money, and
a procuration to the Portuguese captain, as he desired.
I wrote the English captain's widow a full account of all my
adventures - my slavery, escape, and how I had met with the Portuguese
captain at sea, the humanity of his behaviour, and what condition I
was now in, with all other necessary directions for my supply; and
when this honest captain came to Lisbon, he found means, by some of
the English merchants there, to send over, not the order only, but a
full account of my story to a merchant in London, who represented it
effectually to her; whereupon she not only delivered the money, but
out of her own pocket sent the Portugal captain a very handsome
present for his humanity and charity to me.
The merchant in London, vesting this hundred pounds in English goods,
such as the captain had written for, sent them directly to him at
Lisbon, and he brought them all safe to me to the Brazils; among
which, without my direction (for I was too young in my business to
think of them), he had taken care to have all sorts of tools,
ironwork, and utensils necessary for my plantation, and which were of
great use to me.
When this cargo arrived I thought my fortune made, for I was surprised
with the joy of it; and my stood steward, the captain, had laid out
the five pounds, which my friend had sent him for a present for
himself, to purchase and bring me over a servant, under bond for six
years' service, and would not accept of any consideration, except a
little tobacco, which I would have him accept, being of my own
produce.
Neither was this all; for my goods being all English manufacture, such
as cloths, stuffs, baize, and things particularly valuable and
desirable in the country, I found means to sell them to a very great
advantage; so that I might say I had more than four times the value of
my first cargo, and was now infinitely beyond my poor neighbour - I
mean in the advancement of my plantation; for the first thing I did, I
bought me a negro slave, and an European servant also - I mean another
besides that which the captain brought me from Lisbon.
But as abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our
greatest adversity, so it was with me. I went on the next year with
great success in my plantation: I raised fifty great rolls of tobacco
on my own ground, more than I had disposed of for necessaries among my
neighbours; and these fifty rolls, being each of above a
hundredweight, were well cured, and laid by against the return of the
fleet from Lisbon: and now increasing in business and wealth, my head
began to be full of projects and undertakings beyond my reach; such as
are, indeed, often the ruin of the best heads in business. Had I
continued in the station I was now in, I had room for all the happy
things to have yet befallen me for which my father so earnestly
recommended a quiet, retired life, and of which he had so sensibly
described the middle station of life to be full of; but other things
attended me, and I was still to be the wilful agent of all my own
miseries; and particularly, to increase my fault, and double the
reflections upon myself, which in my future sorrows I should have
leisure to make, all these miscarriages were procured by my apparent
obstinate adhering to my foolish inclination of wandering abroad, and
pursuing that inclination, in contradiction to the clearest views of
doing myself good in a fair and plain pursuit of those prospects, and
those measures of life, which nature and Providence concurred to
present me with, and to make my duty.