Даниэль Дефо: Робинзон Крузо / Robinson Crusoe

This was game indeed to us, but this was no food; and I was very sorry to lose three charges of powder and shot upon a creature that was good for nothing to us. Xury and I took the skin off the lion, for I thought it might be of some value.

We sailed along the coast for ten or twelve days. I sailed near the shore because we need a lot of water to drink and also in the reason, that I hoped that we would meet a European trading ship and be saved, but we did not meet one.

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 that their skin was black, and they were naked. Once I thought of going ashore to meet them, but Xury advised against it. 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, [87]which Xury said was a lance, [88]and that they could throw them a great way with good aim; [89]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 [90]to me to stop my ship, and they would fetch me some meat. They brought meat and grain and left it on the beach for us. I made signs to thank them but had nothing to give them in payment.

However, we soon had the chance to do them a great service. Just as we reached our boat, a leopard came running down from the mountain towards the beach. I shot it dead. The Negroes were amazed and terrified by the sound of my gun. When they saw that the leopard was dead, they approached him. They wished to eat the flesh of this animal. I made signs to tell them that they could have him and they began cutting him up. They cut off his skin and gave it to us.

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.

One day, 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 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. He said that my property would be returned to me when we arrived. He offered to buy my boat from me. He paid me eighty pieces of eight, this is a kind of silver coins, [91]two pieces of eight could buy a horse, so eighty pieces was a real treasure for me! He also offered me sixty pieces of eight for Xury, but I didn’t want to sell him. Xury had helped me to escape from slavery, so I didn’t want him to become a poor slave again. However, the captain offered to set Xury free in ten years, if he became a Christian. The boy said he was willing to go with captain, so I let the master 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 [92]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; [93]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 [94]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, [95]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, [96]I purchased as much land that was uncured as my money would reach, and formed a plan for my plantation and settlement; such as 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 [97]as I was. I call him my neighbour, because his plantation lay next to mine, and we went on very sociably together. My stock [98]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.

I was not happy in my new life. This was the middle state of which my father had spoken. I often said to myself, that I could have done this at home, instead of coming about five thousand miles to do it among strangers and savages. 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, [99]that had nobody there but himself. I thought I was like a man stranded alone upon an island. Never compare your situation to a worse one! God may place you in the worse situation, so that you long for your old life! I say, God just to leave me on an island, where I really was alone! If I had been content to stay as I was, I would have been rich and happy. By living me on an island, God made me understand this.