The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
Friday home away to my nation?” “Why,” says I, “Friday, did not you say
you wished you were there?” “Yes, yes,” says he, “wish we both there;
no wish Friday there, no master there.” In a word, he would not think
of going there without me. “I go there, Friday?” says I; “what shall I
do there?” He turned very quick upon me at this. “You do great deal
much good,” says he; “you teach wild mans be good, sober, tame mans;
you tell them know God, pray God, and live new life.” “Alas, Friday!”
says I, “thou knowest not what thou sayest; I am but an ignorant man
myself.” “Yes, yes,” says he, “you teachee me good, you teachee them
good.” “No, no, Friday,” says I, “you shall go without me; leave me
here to live by myself, as I did before.” He looked confused again at
that word; and running to one of the hatchets which he used to wear, he
takes it up hastily, and gives it to me. “What must I do with this?”
says I to him. “You take kill Friday,” says he. “What must I kill you
for?” said I again. He returns very quick—“What you send Friday away
for? Take kill Friday, no send Friday away.” This he spoke so earnestly
that I saw tears stand in his eyes. In a word, I so plainly discovered
the utmost affection in him to me, and a firm resolution in him, that I
told him then and often after, that I would never send him away from me
if he was willing to stay with me.
Upon the whole, as I found by all his discourse a settled affection to
me, and that nothing could part him from me, so I found all the
foundation of his desire to go to his own country was laid in his
ardent affection to the people, and his hopes of my doing them good; a
thing which, as I had no notion of myself, so I had not the least
thought or intention, or desire of undertaking it. But still I found a
strong inclination to attempting my escape, founded on the supposition
gathered from the discourse, that there were seventeen bearded men
there; and therefore, without any more delay, I went to work with
Friday to find out a great tree proper to fell, and make a large
periagua, or canoe, to undertake the voyage. There were trees enough in
the island to have built a little fleet, not of periaguas or canoes,
but even of good, large vessels; but the main thing I looked at was, to
get one so near the water that we might launch it when it was made, to
avoid the mistake I committed at first. At last Friday pitched upon a
tree; for I found he knew much better than I what kind of wood was
fittest for it; nor can I tell to this day what wood to call the tree
we cut down, except that it was very like the tree we call fustic, or
between that and the Nicaragua wood, for it was much of the same colour
and smell. Friday wished to burn the hollow or cavity of this tree out,
to make it for a boat, but I showed him how to cut it with tools;
which, after I had showed him how to use, he did very handily; and in
about a month’s hard labour we finished it and made it very handsome;
especially when, with our axes, which I showed him how to handle, we
cut and hewed the outside into the true shape of a boat. After this,
however, it cost us near a fortnight’s time to get her along, as it
were inch by inch, upon great rollers into the water; but when she was
in, she would have carried twenty men with great ease.
When she was in the water, though she was so big, it amazed me to see
with what dexterity and how swift my man Friday could manage her, turn
her, and paddle her along. So I asked him if he would, and if we might
venture over in her. “Yes,” he said, “we venture over in her very well,
though great blow wind.” However I had a further design that he knew
nothing of, and that was, to make a mast and a sail, and to fit her
with an anchor and cable. As to a mast, that was easy enough to get; so
I pitched upon a straight young cedar-tree, which I found near the
place, and which there were great plenty of in the island, and I set
Friday to work to cut it down, and gave him directions how to shape and
order it. But as to the sail, that was my particular care. I knew I had
old sails, or rather pieces of old sails, enough; but as I had had them
now six-and-twenty years by me, and had not been very careful to
preserve them, not imagining that I should ever have this kind of use
for them, I did not doubt but they were all rotten; and, indeed, most
of them were so. However, I found two pieces which appeared pretty
good, and with these I went to work; and with a great deal of pains,
and awkward stitching, you may be sure, for want of needles, I at
length made a three-cornered ugly thing, like what we call in England a
shoulder-of-mutton sail, to go with a boom at bottom, and a little
short sprit at the top, such as usually our ships’ long-boats sail
with, and such as I best knew how to manage, as it was such a one as I
had to the boat in which I made my escape from Barbary, as related in
the first part of my story.
I was near two months performing this last work, viz. rigging and
fitting my masts and sails; for I finished them very complete, making a
small stay, and a sail, or foresail, to it, to assist if we should turn
to windward; and, what was more than all, I fixed a rudder to the stern
of her to steer with. I was but a bungling shipwright, yet as I knew
the usefulness and even necessity of such a thing, I applied myself
with so much pains to do it, that at last I brought it to pass; though,
considering the many dull contrivances I had for it that failed, I
think it cost me almost as much labour as making the boat.
After all this was done, I had my man Friday to teach as to what
belonged to the navigation of my boat; though he knew very well how to
paddle a canoe, he knew nothing of what belonged to a sail and a
rudder; and was the most amazed when he saw me work the boat to and
again in the sea by the rudder, and how the sail jibed, and filled this
way or that way as the course we sailed changed; I say when he saw this
he stood like one astonished and amazed. However, with a little use, I
made all these things familiar to him, and he became an expert sailor,
except that of the compass I could make him understand very little. On
the other hand, as there was very little cloudy weather, and seldom or
never any fogs in those parts, there was the less occasion for a
compass, seeing the stars were always to be seen by night, and the
shore by day, except in the rainy seasons, and then nobody cared to
stir abroad either by land or sea.
I was now entered on the seven-and-twentieth year of my captivity in
this place; though the three last years that I had this creature with
me ought rather to be left out of the account, my habitation being
quite of another kind than in all the rest of the time. I kept the
anniversary of my landing here with the same thankfulness to God for
His mercies as at first: and if I had such cause of acknowledgment at
first, I had much more so now, having such additional testimonies of
the care of Providence over me, and the great hopes I had of being
effectually and speedily delivered; for I had an invincible impression
upon my thoughts that my deliverance was at hand, and that I should not
be another year in this place. I went on, however, with my husbandry;
digging, planting, and fencing as usual. I gathered and cured my
grapes, and did every necessary thing as before.
The rainy season was in the meantime upon me, when I kept more within
doors than at other times. We had stowed our new vessel as secure as we
could, bringing her up into the creek, where, as I said in the
beginning, I landed my rafts from the ship; and hauling her up to the
shore at high-water mark, I made my man Friday dig a little dock, just
big enough to hold her, and just deep enough to give her water enough
to float in; and then, when the tide was out, we made a strong dam
across the end of it, to keep the water out; and so she lay, dry as to
the tide from the sea: and to keep the rain off we laid a great many
boughs of trees, so thick that she was as well thatched as a house; and
thus we waited for the months of November and December, in which I
designed to make my adventure.
When the settled season began to come in, as the thought of my design
returned with the fair weather, I was preparing daily for the voyage.
And the first thing I did was to lay by a certain quantity of
provisions, being the stores for our voyage; and intended in a week or
a fortnight’s time to open the dock, and launch out our boat. I was
busy one morning upon something of this kind, when I called to Friday,
and bid him to go to the sea-shore and see if he could find a turtle or
a tortoise, a thing which we generally got once a week, for the sake of
the eggs as well as the flesh. Friday had not been long gone when he
came running back, and flew over my outer wall or fence, like one that
felt not the ground or the steps he set his foot on; and before I had
time to speak to him he cries out to me, “O master! O master! O sorrow!
O bad!”—“What’s the matter, Friday?” says I. “O yonder there,” says he,
“one, two, three canoes; one, two, three!” By this way of speaking I
concluded there were six; but on inquiry I found there were but three.
“Well, Friday,” says I, “do not be frightened.” So I heartened him up
as well as I could. However, I saw the poor fellow was most terribly
scared, for nothing ran in his head but that they were come to look for
him, and would cut him in pieces and eat him; and the poor fellow
trembled so that I scarcely knew what to do with him. I comforted him
as well as I could, and told him I was in as much danger as he, and
that they would eat me as well as him. “But,” says I, “Friday, we must
resolve to fight them. Can you fight, Friday?” “Me shoot,” says he,
“but there come many great number.” “No matter for that,” said I again;
“our guns will fright them that we do not kill.” So I asked him
whether, if I resolved to defend him, he would defend me, and stand by
me, and do just as I bid him. He said, “Me die when you bid die,
master.” So I went and fetched a good dram of rum and gave him; for I
had been so good a husband of my rum that I had a great deal left. When
we had drunk it, I made him take the two fowling-pieces, which we
always carried, and loaded them with large swan-shot, as big as small
pistol-bullets. Then I took four muskets, and loaded them with two
slugs and five small bullets each; and my two pistols I loaded with a
brace of bullets each. I hung my great sword, as usual, naked by my
side, and gave Friday his hatchet. When I had thus prepared myself, I
took my perspective glass, and went up to the side of the hill, to see
what I could discover; and I found quickly by my glass that there were
one-and-twenty savages, three prisoners, and three canoes; and that
their whole business seemed to be the triumphant banquet upon these
three human bodies: a barbarous feast, indeed! but nothing more than,
as I had observed, was usual with them. I observed also that they had
landed, not where they had done when Friday made his escape, but nearer
to my creek, where the shore was low, and where a thick wood came
almost close down to the sea. This, with the abhorrence of the inhuman
errand these wretches came about, filled me with such indignation that
I came down again to Friday, and told him I was resolved to go down to
them and kill them all; and asked him if he would stand by me. He had
now got over his fright, and his spirits being a little raised with the
dram I had given him, he was very cheerful, and told me, as before, he
would die when I bid die.
In this fit of fury I divided the arms which I had charged, as before,
between us; I gave Friday one pistol to stick in his girdle, and three
guns upon his shoulder, and I took one pistol and the other three guns