The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe - 43

The Spaniard governor having drawn his little body up together upon a rising ground, Atkins, though he was wounded, would have had him march, and charge them again all together at once: but the Spaniard replied, "Seignior Atkins, you see how their wounded men fight; let them alone till morning; all these wounded men will be stiff and sore with their wounds, and faint with the loss of blood, and so we shall have the fewer to engage."

The advice was good; but Will Atkins replied merrily, "That's true, Seignior, and so shall I too; and that's the reason I would go on while I am warm."--"Well, Seignior Atkins," says the Spaniard, "you have behaved gallantly, and done your part; we will fight for you, if you cannot come on; but I think it best to stay till morning:" so they waited.

But as it was a clear moonlight night, and they found the savages in great disorder about their dead and wounded men, and a great hurry and noise among them where they lay, they afterwards resolved to fall upon them in the night, especially if they could come to give them but one volley before they were discovered. This they had a fair opportunity to do; for one of the two Englishmen, in whose quarter it was where the fight began, led them round between the woods and the sea-side, westward, and turning short south, they came so near where the thickest of them lay, that before they were seen or heard, eight of them fired in among them, and did dreadful execution upon them; in half a minute more eight others fired after them, pouring in their small shot in such a quantity, that abundance were killed and wounded; and all this while they were not able to see who hurt them, or which way to fly.

The Spaniards charged again with the utmost expedition, and then divided themselves into three bodies, and resolved to fall in among them all together. They had in each body eight persons; that is to say, twenty-four, whereof were twenty-two men, and the two women, who, by the way, fought desperately.

They divided the fire-arms equally in each party, and so of the halberts and staves. They would have had the women keep back; but they said they were resolved to die with their husbands. Having thus formed their little army, they marched out from among the trees, and came up to the teeth of the enemy, shouting and hallooing as loud as they could. The savages stood all together, but were in the utmost confusion, hearing the noise of our men shouting from three quarters together; they would have fought if they had seen us; and as soon as we came near enough to be seen, some arrows were shot, and poor old Friday was wounded, though not dangerously. But our men gave them no time, but running up to them, fired among them three ways, and then fell in with the butt ends of their muskets, their swords, armed staves, and hatchets; and laid about them so well, that in a word they set up a dismal screaming and howling, flying to save their lives which way soever they could.

Our men were tired with the execution; and killed, or mortally wounded, in the two fights, about one hundred and eighty of them: the rest, being frighted out of their wits, scoured through the woods and over the hills, with all the speed that fear and nimble feet could help them to do; and as we did not trouble ourselves much to pursue them, they got all together to the sea-side, where they landed, and where their canoes lay. But their disaster was not at an end yet, for it blew a terrible storm of wind that evening from the seaward, so that it was impossible for them to put off; nay, the storm continuing all night, when the tide came up their canoes were most of them driven by the surge of the sea so high upon the shore, that it required infinite toil to get them off; and some of them were even dashed to pieces against the beach, or against one another.

Our men, though glad of their victory, yet got little rest that night; but having refreshed themselves as well as they could, they resolved to march to that part of the island where the savages were fled, and see what posture they were in. This necessarily led them over the place where the fight had been, and where they found several of the poor creatures not quite dead, and yet past recovering life; a sight disagreeable enough to generous minds; for a truly great man, though obliged by the law of battle to destroy his enemy, takes no delight in his misery.

However, there was no need to give any order in this case; for their own savages, who were their servants, dispatched those poor creatures with their hatchets.

At length they came in view of the place where the more miserable remains of the savages' army lay, where there appeared about one hundred still: their posture was generally sitting upon the ground, with their knees up towards their mouth, and the head put between the hands, leaning down upon the knees.

When our men came within two musket-shot of them, the Spaniard governor ordered two muskets to be fired without ball, to alarm them; this he did, that by their countenance he might know what to expect, viz. whether they were still in heart to fight, or were so heartily beaten, as to be dispirited and discouraged, and so he might manage accordingly.

This stratagem took; for as soon as the savages heard the first gun, and saw the flash of the second, they started up upon their feet in the greatest consternation imaginable; and as our men advanced swiftly towards them, they all ran screaming and yawling away, with a kind of an howling noise, which our men did not understand, and had never heard before; and thus they ran up the hills into the country.

At first our men had much rather the weather had been calm, and they had all gone away to sea; but they did not then consider, that this might probably have been the occasion of their coming again in such multitudes as not to be resisted; or, at least, to come so many and so often, as would quite desolate the island and starve them. Will Atkins therefore, who, notwithstanding his wound, kept always with them, proved the best counsellor in this case. His advice was, to take the advantage that offered, and clap in between them and their boats, and so deprive them of the capacity of ever returning any more to plague the island.

They consulted long about this, and some were against it, for fear of making the wretches fly into the woods, and live there desperate; and so they should have them to hunt like wild beasts, be afraid to stir about their business, and have their plantation continually rifled, all their tame goats destroyed, and, in short, be reduced to a life of continual distress.

Will Atkins told them they had better have to do with one hundred men than with one hundred nations; that as they must destroy their boats, so they must destroy the men, or be all of them destroyed themselves. In a word, he shewed them the necessity of it so plainly, that they all came into it; so they went to work immediately with the boats, and getting some dry wood together from a dead tree, they tried to set some of them on fire; but they were so wet that they would scarce burn. However, the fire so burned the upper part, that it soon made them unfit for swimming in the sea as boats. When the Indians saw what they were about, some of them came running out of the woods, and coming as near as they could to our men, kneeled down and cried, Oa, Oa, Waramokoa, and some other words of their language, which none of the others understood any thing of; but as they made pitiful gestures and strange noises, it was easy to understand they begged to have their boats spared, and that they would be gone, and never return thither again.

But our men were now satisfied, that they had no way to preserve themselves or to save their colony, but effectually to prevent any of these people from ever going home again; depending upon this, that if ever so much as one of them got back into their country to tell the story, the colony was undone; so that letting them know that they should not have any mercy, they fell to work with their canoes, and destroyed them, every one that the storm had not destroyed before; at the sight of which the savages raised a hideous cry in the woods, which our people heard plain enough; after which they ran about the island like distracted men; so that, in a word, our men did not really know at first what to do with them.

Nor did the Spaniards, with all their prudence, consider that while they made those people thus desperate, they ought to have kept good guard at the same time upon their plantations; for though it is true they had driven away their cattle, and the Indians did not find their main retreat, I mean my old castle at the hill, nor the cave in the valley; yet they found out my plantation at the bower, and pulled it all to pieces, and all the fences and planting about it; trod all the corn under foot; tore up the vines and grapes, being just then almost ripe, and did our men an inestimable damage, though to themselves not one farthing's-worth of service.

Though our men were able to fight them upon all occasions, yet they were in no condition to pursue them, or hunt them up and down; for as they were too nimble of foot for our men when they found them single, so our men durst not go about single for fear of being surrounded with their numbers: the best was, they had no weapons; for though they had bows they had no arrows left, nor any materials to make any, nor had they any edged tool or weapon among them. The extremity and distress they were reduced to was great, and indeed deplorable, but at the same time our men were also brought to very hard circumstances by them; for though their retreats were preserved, yet their provision was destroyed, and their harvest spoiled; and what to do or which way to turn themselves, they knew not; the only refuge they had now was the stock of cattle they had in the valley by the cave, and some little corn which grew there. The three Englishmen, William Atkins and his comrades, were now reduced to two, one of them being killed by an arrow, which struck him on the side of his head, just under the temples, so that he never spoke more; and it was very remarkable, that this was the same barbarous fellow who cut the poor savage slave with his hatchet, and who afterwards intended to have murdered the Spaniards.

I look upon their case to have been worse at this time than mine was at any time after I first discovered the grains of barley and rice, and got into the method of planting and raising my corn, and my tame cattle; for now they had, as I may say, an hundred wolves upon the island, which would devour every thing they could come at, yet could be very hardly come at themselves.

The first thing they concluded when they saw what their circumstances were, was, that they would, if possible, drive them up to the farther part of the island, south-east, that if any more savages came on shore, they might not find one another; then that they would daily hunt and harass them, and kill as many of them as they could come at, till they had reduced the number; and if they could at last tame them, and bring them to any thing, they would give them corn, and teach them how to plant, and live upon their daily Labour.

In order to this they followed them, and so terrified them with their guns, that in a few days, if any of them fired a gun at an Indian, if he did not hit him, yet he would fall down for fear; and so dreadfully frighted they were, that they kept out of sight farther and farther, till at last our men following them, and every day almost killing and wounding some of them, they kept up in the woods and hollow places so much, that it reduced them to the utmost misery for want of food; and many were afterwards found dead in the woods, without any hurt, but merely starved to death.

When our men found this, it made their hearts relent, and pity moved them; especially the Spaniard governor, who was the most gentleman-like, generous-minded man that ever I met with in my life; and he proposed, if possible, to take one of them alive, and bring him to understand what they meant, so far as to be able to act as interpreter, and to go among them, and see if they might be brought to some conditions that might be depended upon, to save their lives, and do us no spoil.

It was some time before any of them could be taken; but being weak, and half-starved, one of them was at last surprised, and made a prisoner: he was sullen at first, and would neither eat nor drink; but finding himself kindly used, and victuals given him, and no violence offered him, he at last grew tractable, and came to himself.

They brought old Friday to him, who talked often with him, and told him how kind the others would be to them all: that they would not only save their lives, but would give them a part of the island to live in, provided they would give satisfaction; that they should keep in their own bounds, and not come beyond them, to injure or prejudice others; and that they should have corn given them, to plant and make it grow for their bread, and some bread given them for their present subsistence; and old Friday bade the fellow go and talk with the rest of his countrymen, and hear what they said to it, assuring them that if they did not agree immediately they should all be destroyed.

The poor wretches, thoroughly humbled, and reduced in number to about thirty-seven, closed with the proposal at the first offer, and begged to have some food given them; upon which twelve Spaniards and two Englishmen, well armed, and three Indian slaves, and old Friday, marched to the place where they were; the three Indian slaves carried them a large quantity of bread, and some rice boiled up to cakes, and dried in the sun, and three live goats; and they were ordered to go to the side of an hill, where they sat down, ate the provisions very thankfully, and were the most faithful fellows to their words that could be thought of; for except when they came to beg victuals and directions they never came out of their bounds; and there they lived when I came to the island, and I went to see them.

They had taught them both to plant corn, make bread, breed tame goats, and milk them; they wanted nothing but wives, and they soon would have been a nation: they were confined to a neck of land surrounded with high rocks behind them, and lying plain towards the sea before them, on the south-east corner of the island; they had land enough, and it was very good and fruitful; for they had a piece of land about a mile and a half broad, and three or four miles in length.

Our men taught them to make wooden spades, such as I made for myself; and gave among them twelve hatchets, and three or four knives; and there they lived, the most subjected innocent creatures that were ever heard of.

After this the colony enjoyed a perfect tranquillity with respect to the savages, till I came to revisit them, which was in about two years. Not but that now and then some canoes of savages came on shore for their triumphal, unnatural feasts; but as they were of several nations, and, perhaps, had never heard of those that came before, or the reason of it, they did not make any search or inquiry after their countrymen; and if they had, it would have been very hard for them to have found them out.

Thus, I think, I have given a full account of all that happened to them to my return, at least that was worth notice. The Indians, or savages, were wonderfully civilized by them, and they frequently went among them; but forbid, on pain of death, any of the Indians coming to them, because they would not have their settlement betrayed again.

One thing was very remarkable, viz. that they taught the savages to make wicker-work, or baskets; but they soon outdid their masters; for they made abundance of most ingenious things in wicker-work; particularly all sorts of baskets, sieves, bird-cages, cupboards, &c. as also chairs to sit on, stools, beds, couches, and abundance of other things, being very ingenious at such work when they were once put in the way of it.

My coming was a particular relief to these people, because we furnished them with knives, scissars, spades, shovels, pickaxes, and all things of that kind which they could want.

With the help of these tools they were so very handy, that they came at last to build up their huts, or houses, very handsomely; raddling, or working it up like basket-work all the way round, which was a very extraordinary piece of ingenuity, and looked very odd; but was an exceeding good fence, as well against heat, as against all sorts of vermin; and our men were so taken with it, that they got the wild savages to come and do the like for them; so that when I came to see the two Englishmen's colonies, they looked, at a distance, as if they lived all like bees in a hive; and as for Will Atkins, who was now become a very industrious, necessary, and sober fellow, he had made himself such a tent of basket work as I believe was never seen. It was one hundred and twenty paces round on the outside, as I measured by my steps; the walls were as close worked as a basket, in pannels or squares, thirty-two in number, and very strong, standing about seven feet high: in the middle was another not above twenty-two paces round, but built stronger, being eight-square in its form, and in the eight corners stood eight very strong posts, round the top of which he laid strong pieces, joined together with wooden pins, from which he raised a pyramid before the roof of eight rafters, very handsome I assure you, and joined together very well, though he had no nails, and only a few iron spikes, which he had made himself too, out of the old iron that I had left there; and indeed this fellow shewed abundance of ingenuity in several things which he had no knowledge of; he made himself a forge, with a pair of wooden bellows to blow the fire; he made himself charcoal for his work, and he formed out of one of the iron crows a middling good anvil to hammer upon; in this manner he made many things, but especially hooks, staples and spikes, bolts and hinges. But to return to the house: after he pitched the roof of his innermost tent, he worked it up between the rafters with basket-work, so firm, and thatched that over again so ingeniously with rice-straw, and over that a large leaf of a tree, which covered the top, that his house was as dry as if it had been tiled or slated. Indeed he owned that the savages made the basket-work for him.

The outer circuit was covered, as a lean-to, all round his inner, apartment, and long rafters lay from the thirty two angles to the top posts of the inner house, being about twenty feet distant; so that there was a space like a walk within the outer wicker wall, and without the inner, near twenty feet wide.