The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
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 had 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