The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) Part 32

I was most agreeably surprised when he named the match; for indeed I had thought it very suitable. The character of that man I have given already; and as for the maid, she was a very honest, modest, sober, and religious young woman; had a very good share of sense; was agreeable enough in her person; spoke very handsomely, and to the purpose; always with decency and good manners, and not backward to speak when any thing required it, or impertinently forward to speak when it was not her business; very handy and housewifely in any thing that was before her; an excellent manager, and fit indeed to have been governess to the whole island; she knew very well how to behave herself to all kind of folks she had about her, and to better if she had found any there.

The match being proposed in this manner, we married them the same day: and as I was father at the altar, as I may say, and gave her away, so I gave her a portion, for I appointed her and her husband a handsome large s.p.a.ce of ground for their plantation; and indeed this match, and the proposal the young gentleman made to me, to give him a small property in the island, put me upon parcelling it out among them, that they might not quarrel afterwards about their situation.

This sharing out the land to them I left to Will Atkins, who indeed was now grown a most sober, grave, managing fellow, perfectly reformed, exceeding pious and religious, and as far as I may be allowed to speak positively in such a case, I verily believe was a true sincere penitent.

He divided things so justly, and so much to every one's satisfaction, that they only desired one general writing under my hand for the whole, which I caused to be drawn up, and signed and sealed to them, setting out the bounds and situation of every man's plantation, and testifying that I gave them thereby, severally, a right to the whole possession and inheritance of the respective plantations or farms, with their improvements, to them and their heirs; reserving all the rest of the island as my own property, and a certain rent for every particular plantation after eleven years, if I or any one from me, or in my name, came to demand it, producing an attested copy of the same writing.

As to the government and laws among them, I told them, I was not capable of giving them better rules than they were able to give themselves; only made them promise me to live in love and good neighbourhood with one another: and so I prepared to leave them.

One thing I must not omit, and that is, that being now settled in a kind of commonwealth among themselves, and having much business in hand, it was but odd to have seven-and-thirty Indians live in a nook of the island, independent, and indeed unemployed; for excepting the providing themselves food, which they had difficulty enough in doing sometimes, they had no manner of business or property to manage: I proposed therefore to the governor Spaniard, that he should go to them with Friday's father, and propose to them to remove, and either plant for themselves, or take them into their several families as servants, to be maintained for their labour, but without being absolute slaves, for I would not admit them to make them slaves by force by any means, because they had their liberty given by capitulation, and as it were articles of surrender, which they ought not to break.

They most willingly embraced the proposal, and came all very cheerfully along with him; so we allotted them land and plantations, which three or four accepted of, but all the rest chose to be employed as servants in the several families we had settled; and thus my colony was in a manner settled as follows: The Spaniards possessed my original habitation, which was the capital city, and extended their plantation all along the side of the brook which made the creek that I have so often described, as far as my bower; and as they increased their culture, it went always eastward. The English lived in the north-east part, where Will Atkins and his comrades began, and came on southward and south-west, towards the back part of the Spaniards; and every plantation had a great addition of land to take in, if they found occasion, so that they need not jostle one another for want of room.

All the west end of the island was left uninhabited, that, if any of the savages should come on sh.o.r.e there, only for their usual customary barbarities, they might come and go; if they disturbed n.o.body, n.o.body would disturb them; and no doubt but they were often ash.o.r.e, and went away again, for I never heard that the planters were ever attacked and disturbed any more.

It now came into my thoughts that I had hinted to my friend the clergyman that the work of converting the savages might perhaps be set on foot in his absence to his satisfaction; and I told him, that now I thought it was put in a fair way, for the savages being thus divided among the Christians, if they would but every one of them do their part with those which came under their hands, I hoped it might have a very good effect.

He agreed presently in that; "if," said he, "they will do their part; but how," says he, "shall we obtain that of them?" I told him we would call them all together, and leave it in charge with them, or go to them one by one, which he thought best; so we divided it--he to speak to the Spaniards, who were all Papists, and I to the English, who were all Protestants; and we recommended it earnestly to them, and made them promise that they would never make any distinction of Papist or Protestant in their exhorting the savages to turn Christians, but teach them the general knowledge of the true G.o.d, and of their Saviour Jesus Christ; and they likewise promised us that they would never have any differences or disputes one with another about religion.

When I came to Will Atkins's house, (I may call it so, for such a house, or such a piece of basket-work, I believe was not standing in the world again!) I say, when I came thither I found the young woman I have mentioned above, and William Atkins's wife, were become intimates; and this prudent and religious young woman had perfected the work Will Atkins had begun; and though it was not above four days after what I have related, yet the new-baptized savage woman was made such a Christian as I have seldom heard of any like her, in all my observation or conversation in the world.

It came next into my mind in the morning, before I went to them, that among all the needful things I had to leave with them, I had not left a Bible; in which I shewed myself less considering for them than my good friend the widow was for me, when she sent me the cargo of 100_l_. from Lisbon, where she packed up three Bibles and a Prayer-book. However, the good woman's charity had a greater extent than ever she imagined, for they were reserved for the comfort and instruction of those that made much better use of them than I had done.

I took one of the Bibles in my pocket; and when I came to William Atkins's tent, or house, I found the young woman and Atkins's baptized wife had been discoursing of religion together (for William Atkins told it me with a great deal of joy.) I asked if they were together now? And he said yes; so I went into the house, and he with me, and we found them together, very earnest in discourse: "O Sir," says William Atkins, "when G.o.d has sinners to reconcile to himself, and aliens to bring home, he never wants a messenger: my wife has got a new instructor--I knew I was unworthy, as I was incapable of that work--that young woman has been sent hither from Heaven--she is enough to convert a whole island of savages." The young woman blushed, and rose up to go away, but I desired her to sit still; I told her she had a good work upon her hands, and I hoped G.o.d would bless her in it.

We talked a little, and I did not perceive they had any book among them, though I did not ask, but I put my hand in my pocket, and pulled out my Bible. "Here," said I to Atkins, "I have brought you an a.s.sistant, that perhaps you had not before." The man was so confounded, that he was not able to speak for some time; but recovering himself, he takes it with both hands, and turning to his wife, "Here, my dear," says he, "did not I tell you our G.o.d, though he lives above, could hear what we said? Here is the book I prayed for when you and I kneeled down under the bush; now G.o.d has heard us, and sent it." When he had said thus, the man fell in such transports of a pa.s.sionate joy, that between the joy of having it, and giving G.o.d thanks for it, the tears ran down his face like a child that was crying.

The woman was surprised, and was like to have run into a mistake that none of us were aware of; for she firmly believed G.o.d had sent the book upon her husband's pet.i.tion: it is true that providentially it was so, and might be taken so in a consequent sense; but I believed it would have been no difficult matter at that time to have persuaded the poor woman to have believed that an express messenger came from Heaven on purpose to bring that individual book; but it was too serious a matter to suffer any delusion to take place: so I turned to the young woman, and told her we did not desire to impose upon the convert in her first and more ignorant understanding of things, and begged her to explain to her that G.o.d may be very properly said to answer our pet.i.tions, when in the course of his providence such things are in a particular manner brought to pa.s.s as we pet.i.tioned for; but we do not expect returns from Heaven in a miraculous and particular manner; and that it is our mercy it is not so.

This the young woman did afterwards effectually; so that there was, I a.s.sure you, no priestcraft used here; and I should have thought it one of the most unjustifiable frauds in the world to have had it so: but the surprise of joy upon Will Atkins is really not to be expressed; and there we may be sure was no delusion. Sure no man was ever more thankful in the world for any thing of its kind than he was for this Bible; and I believe never any man was glad of a Bible from a better principle; and though he had been a most profligate creature, desperate, headstrong, outrageous, furious, and wicked to a great degree, yet this man is a standing rule to us all for the well instructing children, viz. that parents should never give over to teach and instruct, or ever despair of the success of their endeavours, let the children be ever so obstinate, refractory, or to appearance insensible of instruction; for if ever G.o.d in his providence touches the consciences of such, the force of their education returns upon them, and the early instruction of parents is not lost, though it may have been many years laid asleep, but some time or other they may find the benefit of it.

Thus it was with this poor man. However ignorant he was, or divested of religion and Christian knowledge, he found he had some to do with now more ignorant than himself; and that the least part of the instruction of his good father that could now come to his mind was of use to him.

Among the rest it occurred to him, he said, how his father used to insist much upon the inexpressible value of the Bible, the privilege and blessing of it to nations, families, and persons; but he never entertained the least notion of the worth of it till now, when being to talk to heathens, savages, and barbarians, he wanted the help of the written oracle for his a.s.sistance.

The young woman was very glad of it also for the present occasion, though she had one, and so had the youth, on board our ship among the goods which were not yet brought on sh.o.r.e. And now, having said so many things of this young woman, I cannot omit telling one story more of her and myself, which has something in it very informing and remarkable.

I have related to what extremity the poor young woman was reduced; how her mistress was starved to death, and did die on board that unhappy ship we met at sea; and how the whole ship's company being reduced to the last extremity, the gentlewoman and her son, and this maid, were first hardly used as to provisions, and at last totally neglected and starved; that is to say, brought to the last extremity of hunger.

One day being discoursing with her upon the extremities they suffered, I asked her if she could describe by what she felt what it was to starve, and how it appeared? She told me she believed she could, and she told her tale very distinctly thus:

"First, Sir," said she, "we had for some days fared exceeding hard, and suffered very great hunger, but now at last we were wholly without food of any kind except sugar, and a little wine, and a little water. The first day after I had received no food at all, I found myself, towards evening, first empty and sickish at my stomach, and nearer night mightily inclined to yawning, and sleepy; I lay down on a couch in the great cabin to sleep, and slept about three hours, and awaked a little refreshed, having taken a gla.s.s of wine when I lay down. After being about three hours awake, it being about five o'clock in the morning, I found myself empty, and my stomach sickish again, and lay down again, but could not sleep at all, being very faint and ill; and thus I continued all the second day with a strange variety--first hungry, then sick again, with retchings to vomit. The second night, being obliged to go to bed again without any food more than a draught of fair water, and being asleep, I dreamed I was at Barbadoes, and that the market was mightily stocked with provisions, that I bought some for my mistress, and went and dined very heartily.

"I thought my stomach was full after this, as it would have been after or at a good dinner; but when I waked, I was exceedingly sunk in my spirits to find myself in the extremity of famine; the last gla.s.s of wine we had I drank, and put sugar into it, because of its having some spirit to supply nourishment; but there being no substance in the stomach for the digesting office to work upon, I found the only effect of the wine was to raise disagreeable fumes from the stomach into the head; and I lay, as they told me, stupid and senseless as one drunk for some time.

"The third day in the morning, after a night of strange and confused inconsistent dreams, and rather dozing than sleeping, I awaked ravenous and furious with hunger; and I question, had not my understanding returned and conquered it, I say, I question whether, if I had been a mother, and had had a little child with me, its life would have been safe or no.

"This lasted about three hours, during which time I was twice raging mad as any creature in Bedlam, as my young master told me, and as he can now inform you.

"In one of these fits of lunacy or distraction, whether by the motion of the ship or some slip of my foot I know not, I fell down, and struck my face against the corner of a pallet-bed, in which my mistress lay, and with the blow the blood gushed out of my nose, and the cabin-boy bringing me a little basin, I sat down and bled into it a great deal, and as the blood ran from me I came to myself, and the violence of the flame or the fever I was in abated, and so did the ravenous part of the hunger.

"Then I grew sick, and retched to vomit, but could not, for I had nothing in my stomach to bring up. After I had bled some time I swooned, and they all believed I was dead; but I came to myself soon after, and then had a most dreadful pain in my stomach, not to be described, not like the colic, but a gnawing eager pain for food, and towards night it went off with a kind of earnest wishing or longing for food, something like, as I suppose, the longing of a woman with child. I took another draught of water with sugar in it, but my stomach loathed the sugar, and brought it all up again; then I took a draught of water without sugar, and that stayed with me, and I laid me down upon the bed, praying most heartily that it would please G.o.d to take me away; and composing my mind in hopes of it, I slumbered awhile; and then waking, thought myself dying, being light with vapours from an empty stomach: I recommended my soul to G.o.d, and earnestly wished that somebody would throw me into the sea.

"All this while my mistress lay by me just, as I thought, expiring, but bore it with much more patience than I, and gave the last bit of bread she had to her child, my young master, who would not have taken it, but she obliged him to eat it, and I believe it saved his life.

"Towards the morning I slept again, and first when I awaked I fell into a violent pa.s.sion of crying, and after that had a second fit of violent hunger, so that I got up ravenous, and in a most dreadful condition. Had my mistress been dead, so much as I loved her, I am certain I should have eaten a piece of her flesh with as much relish and as unconcerned as ever I did the flesh of any creature appointed for food; and once or twice I was going to bite my own arm. At last I saw the basin in which was the blood had bled at my nose the day before; I ran to it, and swallowed it with such haste, and such a greedy appet.i.te, as if I had wondered n.o.body had taken it before, and afraid it should be taken from me now.

"Though after it was down the thoughts of it filled me with horror, yet it checked the fit of hunger, and I drank a draught of fair water, and was composed and refreshed for some hours, after it. This was the fourth day; and thus I held it till towards night, when, within the compa.s.s of three hours, I had all these several circ.u.mstances over again, one after another, viz. sick, sleepy, eagerly hungry, pain in the stomach, then ravenous again, then sick again, then lunatic, then crying, then ravenous again, and so every quarter of an hour; and my strength wasted exceedingly. At night I laid me down, having no comfort but in the hope that I should die before morning.

"All this night I had no sleep, but the hunger was now turned into a disease, and I had a terrible colic and griping, wind instead of food having found its way into my bowels; and in this condition I lay till morning, when I was surprised a little with the cries and lamentations of my young master, who called out to me that his mother was dead. I lifted myself up a little, for I had not strength to rise, but found she was not dead, though she was able to give very little signs of life.

"I had then such convulsions in my stomach for want of some sustenance, that I cannot describe them, with such frequent throes and pangs of appet.i.te that nothing but the tortures of death can imitate; and this condition I was in when I heard the seamen above cry out 'A sail! a sail!' and halloo and jump about as if they were distracted.

"I was not able to get off from the bed, and my mistress much less; and my master was so sick that I thought he had been expiring; so we could not open the cabin-door, or get any account what it was that occasioned such a combustion; nor had we any conversation with the ship's company for two days, they having told us they had not a mouthful of any thing to eat in the ship; and they told us afterwards they thought we had been dead.

"It was this dreadful condition we were in when you were sent to save our lives; and how you found us, Sir, you know as well as I, and better too."

This was her own relation, and is such a distinct account of starving to death as I confess I never met with, and was exceeding entertaining to me: I am the rather apt to believe it to be a true account, because the youth gave me an account of a good part of it; though I must own not so distinct and so feelingly as his maid, and the rather because it seems his mother fed him at the price of her own life: but the poor maid, though her const.i.tution being stronger than that of her mistress, who was in years, and a weakly woman too, she might struggle harder with it; I say, the poor maid might be supposed to feel the extremity something sooner than her mistress, who might be allowed to keep the last bits something longer than she parted with any to relieve the maid. No question, as the case is here related, if our ship, or some other, had not so providentially met them, a few days more would have ended all their lives, unless they had prevented it by eating one another; and even that, as their case stood, would have served them but a little while, they being five hundred leagues from any land, or any possibility of relief, other than in the miraculous manner it happened.--But this is by the way; I return to my disposition of things among the people.

And first, it is to be observed here, that for many reasons I did not think fit to let them know any thing of the sloop I had framed, and which I thought of setting up among them; for I found, at least at my first coming, such seeds of division among them, that I saw it plainly, had I set up the sloop, and left it among them, they would, upon very light disgust, have separated, and gone away from one another; or perhaps have turned pirates, and so made the island a den of thieves, instead of a plantation of sober and religious people, as I intended it to be; nor did I leave the two pieces of bra.s.s cannon that I had on board, or the two quarter-deck guns, that my nephew took extraordinary, for the same reason: I thought they had enough to qualify them for a defensive war, against any that should invade them; but I was not to set them up for an offensive war, or to encourage them to go abroad to attack others, which, in the end, would only bring ruin and destruction upon themselves and all their undertakings: I reserved the sloop, therefore, and the guns, for their service another way, as I shall observe in its place.

I have now done with the island: I left them all in good circ.u.mstances, and in a flourishing condition, and went on board my ship again the fifth day of May, having been five and twenty days among them; and, as they were all resolved to stay upon the island till I came to remove them, I promised to send some further relief from the Brasils, if I could possibly find an opportunity; and particularly I promised to send them some cattle; such as sheep, hogs, and cows; for as to the two cows and calves which I brought from England, we had been obliged, by the length of our voyage, to kill them at sea, for want of hay to feed them.

The next day, giving them a salute of five guns at parting, we set sail, and arrived at the bay of All Saints, in the Brasils, in about twenty-two days; meeting nothing remarkable in our pa.s.sage but this, that about three days after we sailed, being becalmed, and the current setting strong to the N.N.E. running, as it were, into a bay or gulf on the land side, we were driven something out of our course; and once or twice our men cried Land, to the westward; but whether it was the continent, or islands, we could not tell by any means.

But the third day, towards evening, the sea smooth and the weather calm, we saw the sea, as it were, covered towards the land, with something very black, not being able to discover what it was; but, after some time, our chief mate going up the main shrouds a little way, and looking at them with a perspective, cried out, it was an army. I could not imagine what he meant by an army, and spoke a little hastily, calling the fellow a fool, or some such word: "Nay, Sir," says he, "don't be angry, for it is an army, and a fleet too; for I believe there are a thousand canoes, and you may see them paddle along, and they are coming towards us too apace, and full of men."

I was a little surprised then, indeed, and so was my nephew the captain; for he had heard such terrible stories of them in the island, and having never been in those seas before, that he could not tell what to think of it, but said two or three times, we should all be devoured. I must confess, considering we were becalmed, and the current set strong towards, the sh.o.r.e, I liked it the worse; however, I bade him not be afraid, but bring the ship to an anchor, as soon as we came so near as to know that we must engage them.

The weather continued calm, and they came on apace towards us; so I gave orders to come to an anchor, and furl all our sails. As for the savages, I told them they had nothing to fear from them but fire; and therefore they should get their boats out, and fasten them, one close by the head, and the other by the stern, and man them both well, and wait the issue in that posture: this I did, that the men in the boats might be ready, with sheet and buckets, to put out any fire these savages might endeavour to fix upon the outside of the ship.

In this posture we lay by for them, and in a little while they came up with us; but never was such a horrid sight seen by Christians; my mate was much mistaken in his calculation of their number, I mean of a thousand canoes; the most we could make of them when they came up, being about 126; and a great many of them too; for some of them had sixteen or seventeen men in them, some more, and the least six or seven.

When they came nearer to us, they seemed to be struck with wonder and astonishment, as at a sight which they had, doubtless, never seen before; nor could they, at first, as we afterwards understood, know what to make of us. They came boldly up however, very near to us, and seemed to go about to row round us; but we called to our men in the boats not to let them come too near them. This very order brought us to an engagement with them, without our designing it; for five or six of the large canoes came so near our long-boat, that our men beckoned with their hands to keep them back, which they understood very well, and went back: but at their retreat about fifty arrows came on board us from those boats, and one of our men in the long-boat was very much wounded.

However, I called to them not to fire by any means; but we handed down some deal boards into the boat, and the carpenter presently set up a kind of fence, like waste boards, to cover them from the arrows of the savages, if they should shoot again.

About half-an-hour afterwards they all came up in a body astern of us, and so near that we could easily discern what they were, though we could not tell their design; and I easily found they were some of my old friends, the same sort of savages that I had been used to engage with.

In a short time more they rowed a little farther out to sea, till they came directly broadside with us, and then rowed down straight upon us, till they came so near that they could hear us speak; upon this, I ordered all my men to keep close, lest they should shoot any more arrows, and made all our guns ready; but being so near as to be within hearing, I made Friday go out upon the deck, and call out aloud to them in his language, to know what they meant. Whether they understood him or not, that I knew not; but as soon as he had called to them, six of them, who were in the foremost or nearest boat to us, turned their canoes from us, and stooping down, showed us their naked backs; whether this was a defiance or challenge we knew not, or whether it was done in mere contempt, or as a signal to the rest; but immediately Friday cried out they were going to shoot, and, unhappily for him, poor fellow, they let fly about three hundred of their arrows, and to my inexpressible grief, killed poor Friday, no other man being in their sight. The poor fellow was shot with no less than three arrows, and about three more fell very near him; such unlucky marksmen they were!

I was so annoyed at the loss of my old trusty servant and companion, that I immediately ordered five guns to be loaded with small shot, and four with great, and gave them such a broadside as they had never heard in their lives before. They were not above half a cable's length off when we fired; and our gunners took their aim so well, that three or four of their canoes were overset, as we had reason to believe, by one shot only. The ill manners of turning up their bare backs to us gave us no great offence; neither did I know for certain whether that which would pa.s.s for the greatest contempt among us might be understood so by them or not; therefore, in return, I had only resolved to have fired four or five guns at them with powder only, which I knew would frighten them sufficiently: but when they shot at us directly with all the fury they were capable of, and especially as they had killed my poor Friday, whom I so entirely loved and valued, and who, indeed, so well deserved it, I thought myself not only justifiable before G.o.d and man, but would have been very glad if I could have overset every canoe there, and drowned every one of them.

I can neither tell how many we killed nor how many we wounded at this broadside, but sure such a fright and hurry never were seen among such a mult.i.tude; there were thirteen or fourteen of their canoes split and overset in all, and the men all set a-swimming: the rest, frightened out of their wits, scoured away as fast as they could, taking but little care to save those whose boats were split or spoiled with our shot; so I suppose that many of them were lost; and our men took up one poor fellow swimming for his life; above an hour after they were all gone.

Our small shot from our cannon must needs kill and wound a great many; but, in short, we never knew any thing how it went with them; for they fled so fast that, in three hours, or thereabouts, we could not see above three or four straggling canoes; nor did we ever see the rest any more; for a breeze of wind springing up the same evening, we weighed and set sail for the Brasils.

We had a prisoner indeed, but the creature was so sullen, that he would neither eat nor speak; and we all fancied he would starve himself to death; but I took a way to cure him; for I made them take him, and turn him into the long-boat, and make him believe they would toss him into the sea again, and so leave him where they found him, if he would not speak: nor would that do, but they really did throw him into the sea, and came away from him; and then he followed them, for he swam like a cork, and called to them in his tongue, though they knew not one word of what he said. However, at last, they took him in again, and then he began to be more tractable; nor did I ever design they should drown him.

We were now under sail again; but I was the most disconsolate creature alive, for want of my man Friday, and would have been very glad to have gone back to the island, to have taken one of the rest from thence for my occasion, but it could not be; so we went on. We had one prisoner, as I have said; and it was a long while before we could make him understand any thing; but in time, our men taught him some English, and he began to be a little tractable: afterwards we inquired what country he came from, but could make nothing of what he said; for his speech was so odd, all gutturals, and spoken in the throat, in such a hollow and odd manner, that we could never form a word from him; and we were all of opinion that they might speak that language as well if they were gagged, as otherwise; nor could we perceive that they had any occasion either for teeth, tongue, lips, or palate; but formed their words just as a hunting-horn forms a tune, with an open throat: he told us, however, some time after, when we had taught him to speak a little English, that they were going, with their kings, to fight a great battle. When he said kings, we asked him, how many kings? He said, there were five nation (we could not make him understand the plural _s_,) and that they all joined to go against two nation. We asked him, What made them come up to us? He said, "To makee te great wonder look."--Where it is to be observed, that all those natives, as also those of Africa, when they learn English, they always add two _e_'s at the end of the words where we use one, and place the accent upon the last of them; as _makee, takee_, and the like; and we could not break them of it; nay, I could hardly make Friday leave it off, though at last he did.