The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) Part 21

This filled us with horror, and we knew not what course to take; but the creatures resolved us soon, for they gathered about us presently, in hopes of prey; and I verily believe there were three hundred of them. It happened very much to our advantage, that at the entrance into the wood, but a little way from it, there by some large timber trees, which had been cut down the summer before, and I suppose lay there for carriage: I drew my little troop in among these trees, and placing ourselves in a line behind one long tree, I advised them all to alight, and keeping that tree before us for a breastwork, to stand in a triangle, or three fronts, enclosing our horses in the centre.

We did so, and it was well we did; for never was a more furious charge than the creatures made upon us in this place; they came on us with a growling kind of a noise, and mounted the piece of timber (which, as I said, was our breastwork,) as if they were only rushing upon their prey; and this fury of theirs, it seems, was princ.i.p.ally occasioned by their seeing our horses behind us, which was the prey they aimed at. I ordered our men to fire as before, every man; and they took their aim so sure, that indeed they killed several of the wolves at the first volley; but there was a necessity to keep a continual firing, for they came on like devils, those behind pushing on those before.

When we had fired our second volley of fusils, we thought they stopped a little, and I hoped they would have gone off, but it was but a moment, for others came forward again; so we fired our vollies of pistols; and I believe in these four firings we killed seventeen or eighteen of them, and lamed twice as many; yet they came on again.

I was loath to spend our last shot too hastily; so I called my servant, not my man Friday, for he was better employed; for, with the greatest dexterity imaginable, he charged my fusil and his own, while we were engaged; but, as I said, I called my other man; and giving him a horn of powder, I bade him lay a train all along the piece of timber, and let it be a large train; he did so, and had but time to get away, when the wolves came up to it, and some were got up upon it; when I, snapping an uncharged pistol close to the powder, set it on fire; and those that were upon the timber were scorched with it, and six or seven of them fell, or rather jumped in among us, with the force and fright of the fire; we dispatched these in an instant, and the rest were so frighted with the light, which the night, for now it was very near dark, made more terrible, that they drew back a little.

Upon which I ordered our last pistols to be fired off in one volley, and after that we gave a shout; upon this the wolves turned tail, and we sallied immediately upon near twenty lame ones, which we found struggling on the ground, and fell a-cutting them with our swords, which answered our expectation; for the crying and howling they made were better understood by their fellows; so that they fled and left us.

We had, first and last, killed about three score of them; and had it been daylight, we had killed many more. The field of battle being thus cleared, we made forward again; for we had still near a league to go. We heard the ravenous creatures howl and yell in the woods as we went, several times; and sometimes we fancied we saw some of them, but the snow dazzling our eyes, we were not certain; so in about an hour more we came to the town, where we were to lodge, which we found in a terrible fright, and all in arms; for it seems, that, the night before, the wolves and some bears had broken into that village, and put them in a terrible fright; and they were obliged to keep guard night and day, but especially in the night, to preserve their cattle, and indeed their people.

The next morning our guide was so ill, and his limbs so swelled with the rankling of his two wounds, that he could go no farther; so we were obliged to take a new guide there, and go to Tholouse, where we found a warm climate, a fruitful pleasant country, and no snow, no wolves, or any thing like them; but when we told our story at Tholouse, they told us it was nothing but what was ordinary in the great forest at the foot of the mountains, especially when the snow lay on the ground; but they inquired much what kind of a guide we had gotten, that would venture to bring us that way in such a severe season; and told us, it was very much we were not all devoured. When we told them how we placed ourselves, and the horses in the middle, they blamed us exceedingly, and told us it was fifty to one but we had been all destroyed; for it was the sight of the horses that made the wolves so furious, seeing their prey; and that at other times they are really afraid of a gun; but they being excessive hungry, and raging on that account, the eagerness to come at the horses had made them senseless of danger; and that if we had not by the continued fire, and at last by the stratagem of the train of powder, mastered them, it had been great odds but that we had been torn to pieces; whereas, had we been content to have sat still on horseback, and fired as hors.e.m.e.n, they would not have taken the horses so much for their own, when men were on their backs, as otherwise; and withal they told us, that at last, if we had stood all together, and left our horses, they would have been so eager to have devoured them, that we might have come off safe, especially having our fire-arms in our hands, and being so many in number.

For my part, I was never so sensible of danger in my life; for seeing above three hundred devils come roaring and open-mouthed to devour us, and having nothing to shelter us, or retreat to, I gave myself over for lost; and as it was, I believe, I shall never care to cross those mountains again; I think I would much rather go a thousand leagues by sea, though I were sure to meet with a storm once a week.

I have nothing uncommon to take notice of in my pa.s.sage through France; nothing but what other travellers have given an account of, with much more advantage than I can. I travelled from Tholouse to Paris, and without any considerable stay came to Calais, and landed safe at Dover, the fourteenth of January, after having had a severe cold season to travel in.

I was now come to the centre of my travels, and had in a little time all my new-discovered estate safe about me, the bills of exchange, which I brought with me, having been very currently paid.

My princ.i.p.al guide and privy-counsellor was my good ancient widow, who, in grat.i.tude for the money I had sent her, thought no pains too much, or care too great, to employ for me; and I trusted her so entirely with every thing, that I was perfectly easy as to the security of my effects; and indeed I was very happy from my beginning, and now to the end, in the unspotted integrity of this good gentlewoman.

And now I began to think of leaving my effects with this woman, and setting out for Lisbon, and so to the Brasils. But now another scruple came in the way, and that was religion; for as I had entertained some doubts about the Roman religion, even while I was abroad, especially in my state of solitude; so I knew there was no going to the Brasils for me, much less going to settle there, unless I resolved to embrace the Roman Catholic religion, without any reserve; except on the other hand I resolved to be a sacrifice to my principles, be a martyr for religion, and die in the Inquisition: so I resolved to stay at home, and, if I could find means for it, to dispose of my plantation.

To this purpose I wrote to my old friend at Lisbon, who in return gave me notice, that he could easily dispose of it there: but that if I thought fit to give him leave to offer it in my name to the two merchants, the survivors of my trustees, who lived in the Brasils, who must fully understand the value of it, who lived just upon the spot, and who I knew to be very rich, so that he believed they would be fond of buying it; he did not doubt, but I should make 4 or 5000 pieces of eight the more of it.

Accordingly I agreed, gave him orders to offer it to them, and he did so; and in about eight months more, the ship being then returned, he sent me an account, that they had accepted the offer, and had remitted 33,000 pieces of eight to a correspondent of theirs at Lisbon, to pay for it.

In return, I signed the instrument of sale in the form which they sent from Lisbon, and sent it to my old man, who sent me the bills of exchange for 32,800 pieces of eight for the estate; reserving the payment of 100 moidores a year, to him (the old man) during his life, and 50 moidores afterwards to his son for his life, which I had promised them; and which the plantation was to make good as a rent charge. And thus I have given the first part of a life of fortune and adventure, a life of Providence's chequer-work, and of a variety which the world will seldom be able to shew the like of: beginning foolishly, but closing much more happily than any part of it ever gave me leave to much as to hope for.

Any one would think, that in this state of complicated good fortune, I was past running any more hazards, and so indeed I had been, if other circ.u.mstances had concurred: but I was inured to a wandering life, had no family, nor many relations; nor, however rich, had I contracted much acquaintance; and though I had sold my estate in the Brasils, yet I could not keep that country out of my head, and had a great mind to be upon the wing again; especially I could not resist the strong inclination I had to see my island, and to know if the poor Spaniards were in being there; and how the rogues I left there had used them.

My true friend the widow earnestly dissuaded me from it, and so far prevailed with me, that almost for seven years she prevented my running abroad; during which time I took my two nephews, the children of one of my brothers, into my care: the eldest having something of his own, I bred up as a gentleman and gave him a settlement of some addition to his estate, after my decease; the other I put out to a captain of a ship; and after five years, finding him a sensible, bold, enterprising young fellow, I put him into a good ship, and sent him to sea: and this young fellow afterwards drew me in, as old as I was, to farther adventures myself.

In the meantime, I in part settled myself here; for, first of all, I married, and that not either to my disadvantage or dissatisfaction; and had three children, two sons and one daughter: but my wife dying, and my nephew coming home with good success from a voyage to Spain, my inclination to go abroad, and his importunity, prevailed, and engaged me to go in his ship as a private trader to the East Indies. This in the year 1694.

In this voyage I visited my new colony in the island, saw my successors the Spaniards, had the whole story of their lives, and of the villains I left there; how at first they insulted the poor Spaniards, how they afterwards agreed, disagreed, united, separated, and how at last the Spaniards were obliged to use violence with them; how they were subjected to the Spaniards; how honestly the Spaniards used them; an history, if it were entered into, as full of variety and wonderful accidents as my own part: particularly also as to their battles with the Caribbeans, who landed several times upon the island, and as to the improvement they made upon the island itself; and how five of them made an attempt upon the main land, and brought away eleven men and five women prisoners; by which, at my coming, I found about twenty young children on the island.

Here I stayed about twenty days; left them supplies of all necessary things, and particularly of arms, powder, shot, clothes, tools, and two workmen, which I brought from England with me; viz. a carpenter and a smith.

Besides this, I shared the lands into parts with them, reserved to myself the property of the whole, but gave them such parts respectively, as they agreed on; and, having settled all things with them, and engaged them not to leave the place, I left them there.

From thence I touched at the Brasils, from whence I sent a bark, which I bought there, with more people to the island; and in it, besides other supplies, I sent seven women, being such as I found proper for service, or for wives to such as would take them. As for the Englishmen, I promised them to send them some women from England, with a good cargo of necessaries, if they would apply themselves to planting; which I afterwards could not perform: the fellows proved very honest and diligent, after they were mastered, and had their properties set apart for them, I sent them also from the Brasils five cows, three of them being big with calf, some sheep, and some hogs, which, when I came again, were considerably increased.

But all these things, with an account how three hundred Caribbees came and invaded them, and ruined their plantations, and how they fought with that whole number twice, and were at first defeated and some of them killed; but at last a storm destroying their enemies' canoes, they famished or destroyed almost all the rest, and renewed and recovered the possession of their plantation, and still lived upon the island:--

All these things, with some very surprising incidents in some new adventures of my own, for ten years more I may, perhaps, give a further account of hereafter.

That homely proverb used on so many occasions in England, viz. "That what is bred in the bone will not go out of the flesh," was never more verified than in the story of my Life. Any one would think, that after thirty-five years affliction, and a variety of unhappy circ.u.mstances, which few men, if any, ever went through before, and after near seven years of peace and enjoyment in the fulness of all things; grown old, and when, if ever, it might be allowed me to have had experience of every state of middle life, and to know which was most adapted to make a man completely happy; I say, after all this, any one would have thought that the native propensity to rambling, which I gave an account of in my first setting out into the world to have been so predominant in my thoughts, should be worn out, the volatile part be fully evacuated, or at least condensed, and I might at sixty-one years of age have been a little inclined to stay at home, and have done venturing life and fortune any more.

Nay farther, the common motive of foreign adventures was taken away in me; for I had no fortune to make, I had nothing to seek: if I had gained ten thousand pounds, I had been no richer; for I had already sufficient for me, and for those I had to leave it to, and that I had was visibly increasing; for having no great family, I could not spend the income of what I had, unless I would set up for an expensive way of living, such as a great family, servants, equipage, gaiety, and the like, which were things I had no notion of, or inclination to; so that I had nothing indeed to do, but to sit still, and fully enjoy what I had got, and see it increase daily upon my hands.

Yet all these things, had no effect upon me, or at least not enough to resist the strong inclination I had to go abroad again, which hung about me like a chronical distemper; particularly the desire of seeing my new plantation in the island, and the colony I left there, ran in my head continually. I dreamed of it all night, and my imagination ran upon it all day; it was uppermost in all my thoughts, and my fancy worked so steadily and strongly upon it, that I talked of it in my sleep; in short, nothing could remove it out of my mind; it even broke so violently into all my discourses, that it made my conversation tiresome; for I could talk of nothing else, all my discourse ran into it, even to impertinence, and I saw it myself.

I have often heard persons of good judgment say, that all the stir people make in the world about ghosts and apparitions, is owing to the strength of imagination, and the powerful operation of fancy in their minds; that there is no such thing as a spirit appearing, or a ghost walking, and the like; that people's poring affectionately upon the past conversation of their deceased friends so realizes it to them, that they are capable of fancying upon some extraordinary circ.u.mstances that they see them, talk to them, and are answered by them, when, in truth, there is nothing but shadow and vapour in the thing; and they really know nothing of the matter.

For my part, I know not to this hour whether there are any such things as real apparitions, spectres, or walking of people after they are dead, or whether there is any thing in the stories they tell us of that kind, more than the product of vapours, sick minds, and wandering fancies. But this I know, that my imagination worked up to such a height, and brought me into such excess of vapours, or what else I may call it, that I actually supposed myself oftentimes upon the spot, at my old castle behind the trees, saw my old Spaniard, Friday's father, and the reprobate sailors whom I left upon the island; nay, I fancied I talked with them, and looked at them so steadily, though I was broad awake, as at persons just before me; and this I did till I often frightened myself with the images my fancy represented to me: one time in my sleep I had the villany of the three pirate sailors so lively related to me, by the first Spaniard and Friday's father, that it was surprising; they told me how they barbarously attempted to murder all the Spaniards, and that they set fire to the provisions they had laid up, on purpose to distress and starve them; things that I had never heard of, and that were yet all of them true in fact; but it was so warm in my imagination, and so realized to me, that to the hour I saw them, I could not be persuaded but that it was or would be true; also how I resented it when the Spaniard complained to me, and how I brought them to justice, tried them before me, and ordered them all three to be hanged. What there was really in this, shall be seen in its place; for however I came to form such things in my dream, and what secret converse of spirits injected it, yet there was, I say, very much of it true. I own, that this dream had nothing literally and specifically true; but the general part was so true, the base and villanous behaviour of these three hardened rogues was such, and had been so much worse than all I can describe, that the dream had too much similitude of the fact; and as I would afterwards have punished them severely, so if I had hanged them all, I had been much in the right, and should have been justifiable both by the laws of G.o.d and man.

But to return to my story.--In this kind of temper I had lived some years, I had no enjoyment of my life, no pleasant hours, no agreeable diversion but what had something or other of this in it; so that my wife, who saw my mind so wholly bent upon it, told me very seriously one night, that she believed there was some secret powerful impulse of Providence upon me, which had determined me to go thither again; and that she found nothing hindered my going, but my being engaged to a wife and children. She told me, that it was true she could not think of parting with me; but as she was a.s.sured, that if she was dead it would be the first thing I would do; so, as it seemed to her that the thing was determined above, she would not be the only obstruction; for if I thought fit, and resolved to go--Here she found me very intent upon her words, and that I looked very earnestly at her; so that it a little disordered her, and she stopped. I asked her why she did not go on, and say out what she was going to say? But I perceived her heart was too full, and some tears stood in her eyes: "Speak out, my dear," said I; "are you willing I should go?"--"No," says she, very affectionately, "I am far from willing: but if you are resolved to go," says she, "and rather than I will be the only hindrance, I will go with you; for though I think it a preposterous thing for one of your years, and in your condition, yet if it must be," said she again, weeping, "I won't leave you; for if it be of Heaven, you must do it; there is no resisting it; and if Heaven makes it your duty to go, he will also make it mine to go with you, or otherwise dispose of me, that I may not obstruct it."

This affectionate behaviour of my wife brought me a little out of the vapours, and I began to consider what I was doing; I corrected my wandering fancy, and began to argue with myself sedately, what business I had, after threescore years, and after such a life of tedious sufferings and disasters, and closed in so happy and easy a manner, I say, what business had I to rush into new hazards, and put myself upon adventures, fit only for youth and poverty to run into?

With those thoughts, I considered my new engagement; that I had a wife, one child born, and my wife then great with child of another; that I had all the world could give me and had no need to seek hazards for gain; that I was declining in years, and ought to think rather of leaving what I had gained, than of seeking to increase it; that as to what my wife had said, of its being an impulse from Heaven, and that it should be my duty to go, I had no notion of that; so after many of these cogitations, I struggled with the power of my imagination, reasoned myself out of it, _as I believe people may always do in like cases, if they will_; and, in a word, I conquered it; composed myself with such arguments as occurred to my thoughts, and which my present condition furnished me plentifully with; and particularly, as the most effectual method, I resolved to divert myself with other things, and to engage in some business that might effectually tie me up from any more excursions of this kind; for I found the thing return upon me chiefly when I was idle, had nothing to do, or any thing of moment immediately before me.

To this purpose I bought a little farm in the county of Bedford, and resolved to remove myself thither. I had a little convenient house upon it, and the land about it I found was capable of great improvement, and that it was many ways suited to my inclination, which delighted in cultivating, managing, planting, and improving of land; and particularly, being an inland country, I was removed from conversing among ships, sailors, and things relating to the remote part of the world.

In a word, I went down to my farm, settled my family, bought me ploughs, harrows, a cart, waggon, horses, cows, sheep; and setting seriously to work, became in one half year a mere country gentleman; my thoughts were entirely taken up in managing my servants, cultivating the ground, enclosing, planting, &c.; and I lived, as I thought, the most agreeable life that nature was capable of directing, or that a man always bred to misfortunes was capable of being retreated to.

I farmed upon my own land, I had no rent to pay, was limited by no articles; I could pull up or cut down as I pleased; what I planted was for myself, and what I improved, was for my family; and having thus left off the thoughts of wandering, I had not the least discomfort in any part of my life, as to this world. Now I thought indeed, that I enjoyed the middle state of life which my father so earnestly recommended to me, a kind of heavenly life, something like what is described by the poet upon the subject of a country life:

Free from vices, free from care, Age has no pains, and youth no snare.

But in the middle of all this felicity, one blow from unforeseen Providence unhinged me at once; and not only made a breach upon me, inevitable and incurable, but drove me, by its consequence, upon a deep relapse into the wandering disposition; which, as I may say, being born in my very blood, soon recovered its hold of me, and, like the returns of a violent distemper, came on with an irresistible force upon me; so that nothing could make any more impression upon me. This blow was the loss of my wife.

It is not my business here to write an elegy upon my wife, to give a character of her particular virtues, and make my court to the s.e.x by the flattery of a funeral sermon. She was, in a few words, the stay of all my affairs, the centre of all my enterprises, the engine that by her prudence reduced me to that happy compa.s.s I was in, from the most extravagant and ruinous project that fluttered in my head as above; and did more to guide my rambling genius, than a mother's tears, a father's instructions, a friend's counsel, or all my own reasoning powers could do. I was happy in listening to her tears, and in being moved by her entreaties, and to the last degree desolate and dislocated in the world by the loss of her.

When she was gone the world looked awkwardly round me, I was as much a stranger in it in my thoughts as I was in the Brasils when I went first on sh.o.r.e there; and as much alone, except as to the a.s.sistance of servants, as I was in my island. I knew neither what to do, or what not to do; I saw the world busy round me, one part labouring for bread, and the other part squandering in vile excesses or empty pleasures, equally miserable, because the end they proposed still fled from them; for the men of pleasure every day surfeited of their vice, and heaped up work for sorrow and repentance, and the men of labour spent their strength in daily strugglings for bread to maintain the vital strength they laboured with; so living in a daily circulation of sorrow, living but to work, and working but to live, as if daily bread were the only end of a wearisome life, and a wearisome life the only occasion of daily bread.

This put me in mind of the life I lived in my kingdom the island, where I suffered no more corn to grow, because I did not want it; and bred no more goats, because I had no more use for them; where the money lay in the drawer till it grew mildewed, and had scarce the favour to be looked upon in twenty years.

All these things, had I improved them as I ought to have done, and as reason and religion had dictated to me, would have taught me to search farther than human enjoyments for a full felicity, and that there was something which certainly was the reason and end of life, superior to all these things, and which was either to be possessed, or at least hoped for, on this side the grave.

But my sage counsellor was gone, I was like a ship without a pilot, that could only run before the wind; my thoughts run all away again into the old affair, my head was quite turned with the whimsies of foreign adventures; and all the pleasing innocent amus.e.m.e.nts of my farm and my garden, my cattle and my family, which before entirely possessed me, were nothing to me, had no relish, and were like music to one that has no ear, or food to one that has no taste: in a word, I resolved to leave off housekeeping, let my farm, and return to London; and in a few months after I did so.

When I came to London I was still as uneasy as before; I had no relish to the place, no employment in it, nothing to do but to saunter about like an idle person, of whom it may be said, he is perfectly useless in G.o.d's creation, and it is not one farthing matter to the rest of his kind whether he be dead or alive. This also was the thing which of all circ.u.mstances of life was the most my aversion, who had been all my days used to an active life; and I would often say to myself, "A state of idleness is the very dregs of life;" and indeed I thought I was much more suitably employed when I was twenty-six days making me a deal board.

It was now the beginning of the year 1693, when my nephew, whom, as I have observed before, I had brought up to the sea, and had made him commander of a ship, was come home from a short voyage to Bilboa, being the first he had made; he came to me, and told me, that some merchants of his acquaintance had been proposing to him to go a voyage for them to the East Indies and to China, as private traders; "And now, uncle," says he, "if you will go to sea with me, I'll engage to land you upon your old habitation in the island, for we are to touch at the Brasils."

Nothing can be a greater demonstration of a future state, and of the existence of an invisible world, than the concurrence of second causes with the ideas of things which we form in our minds, perfectly reserved, and not communicated to any in the world.

My nephew knew nothing how far my distemper of wandering was returned upon me, and I knew nothing of what he had in his thoughts to say, when that very morning, before he came to me, I had, in a great deal of confusion of thought, and revolving every part of my circ.u.mstances in my mind, come to this resolution, viz. that I would go to Lisbon, and consult with my old sea-captain; and so, if it was rational and practicable, I would go and see the island again, and see what was become of my people there. I had pleased myself also with the thoughts of peopling the place, and carrying inhabitants from hence, getting a patent for the possession, and I know not what; when in the middle of all this, in comes my nephew, as I have said, with his project of carrying me thither, in his way to the East Indies.

I paused awhile at his words, and looking steadily at him, "What devil,"

said I, "sent you of this unlucky errand?" My nephew startled, as if he had been frighted at first; but perceiving I was not much displeased with the proposal, he recovered himself. "I hope it may not be an unlucky proposal, Sir," says he; "I dare say you would be pleased to see your new colony there, where you once reigned with more felicity than most of your brother-monarchs in the world."

In a word, the scheme hit so exactly with my temper, that is to say, with the prepossession I was under, and of which I have said so much, that I told him, in a few words, if he agreed with the merchants I would go with him: but I told him I would not promise to go any farther than my own island. "Why, Sir," says he, "you don't want to be left there again, I hope?"--"Why," said I, "can you not take me up again in your return?" He told me, it could not be possible that the merchants would allow him to come that way with a loaden ship of such value, it being a month's sail out of his way, and might be three or four: "Besides, Sir, if I should miscarry," said he, "and not return at all, then you would be just reduced to the condition you were in before."

This was very rational; but we both found out a remedy for it, which was to carry a framed sloop on board the ship, which, being taken in pieces and shipped on board the ship, might, by the help of some carpenters, whom we agreed to carry with us, be set up again in the island, and finished, fit to go to sea in a few days.