The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe - 50

"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 glass 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 God 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 God, 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 passion 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 appetite, as if I had wondered nobody 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 compass of three hours, I had all these several circumstances 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 appetite 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 constitution 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 brass 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 circumstances, 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 passage 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 shore, 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 pass 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 God 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 multitude; 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.

And now I name the poor fellow once more, I must take my last leave of him; poor honest Friday! We buried him with all decency and solemnity possible, by putting him into a coffin, and throwing him into the sea; and I caused them to fire eleven guns for him: and so ended the life of the most grateful, faithful, honest, and most affectionate servant that ever man had.

We now went away with a fair wind for Brasil, and, in about twelve days time, we made land in the latitude of five degrees south of the line, being the north-easternmost land of all that part of America. We kept on S. by E. in sight of the shore four days, when we made the Cape St. Augustine, and in three days came to an anchor off the bay of All Saints, the old place of my deliverance, from whence came both my good and evil fate.