while as amazed; and then recovering myself, I looked up with the utmost
affection of my soul, and, with a flood of tears in my eyes, gave God
thanks, that had cast my first lot in a part of the world where I was
distinguished from such dreadful creatures as these; and that though I
had esteemed my present condition very miserable, had yet given me so
many comforts in it, that I had still more to give thanks for than to
complain of; and this above all, that I had, even in this miserable
condition, been comforted with the knowledge of himself, and the hope of
his blessing, which was a felicity more than sufficiently equivalent to
all the misery which I had suffered, or could suffer.
In this frame of thankfulness I went home to my castle, and began to be
much easier now, as to the safety of my circumstances, than ever I was
before; for I observed, that these wretches never came to this island in
search of what they could get; perhaps not seeking, not wanting, or not
expecting, any thing here, and having often, no doubt, been up in the
covered woody part of it, without finding any thing to their purpose. I
knew I had been here now almost eighteen years, and never saw the least
footsteps of a human creature there before; and might be here eighteen
more as entirely concealed as I was now, if I did not discover myself to
them, which I had no manner of occasion to do, it being my only business
to keep myself entirely concealed where I was, unless I found a better
sort of creatures than cannibals to make myself known to.
Yet I entertained such an abhorrence of the savage wretches that I have
been speaking of, and of the wretched inhuman custom of their devouring
and eating one another up, that I continued pensive and sad, and kept
close within my own circle for almost two years after this: when I say
my own circle, I mean by it my three plantations, viz. my castle, my
country-seat, which I called my bower, and my enclosure in the woods;
nor did I look after this for any other use than as an enclosure for my
goats; for the aversion which nature gave me to these hellish wretches
was such, that I was as fearful of seeing them as of seeing, the devil
himself; nor did I so much as go to look after my boat in all this time,
but began rather to think of making me another; for I could not think
of ever making any more attempts to bring the other boat round the
island to me, lest I should meet with some of those creatures at sea, in
which, if I had happened to have fallen into their hands, I knew what
would have been my lot.
Time, however, and the satisfaction I had, that I was in no danger of
being discovered by these people, began to wear off my uneasiness about
them; and I began to live just in the same composed manner as before;
only with this difference, that I used more caution, and kept my eyes
more about me than I did before, lest I should happen to be seen by any
of them; and particularly, I was more cautious of firing my gun, lest
any of them on the island should happen to hear it; and it was therefore
a very good providence to me, that I had furnished myself with a tame
breed of goats, that I had no need to hunt any more about the woods, or
shoot at them; and if I did catch any more of them after this, it was by
traps and snares, as I had done before; so that for two years after
this, I believe I never fired my gun once off, though I never went out
without it; and, which was more, as I had saved three pistols out of the
ship, I always carried them out with me, or at least two of them,
sticking them in my goat-skin belt: I likewise furbished up one of the
great cutlasses that I had out of the ship, and made me a belt to put it
in also; so that I was now a most formidable fellow to look at when I
went abroad, if you add to the former description of myself, the
particular of two pistols, and a great broad-sword, hanging at my side
in a belt, but without a scabbard.
Things going on thus, as I have said, for some time, I seemed, excepting
these cautions, to be reduced to my former calm sedate way of living.
All these things tended to shew me more and more how far my condition
was from being miserable, compared to some others; nay, to many other
particulars of life, which it might have pleased God to have made my
lot. It put me upon reflecting, how little repining there would be
among mankind, at any condition of life, if people would rather compare
their condition with those that are worse, in order to be thankful, than
be always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their
murmurings and complainings.
As in my present condition there were not really many things which I
wanted, so indeed I thought that the frights I had been in about these
savage wretches, and the concern I had been in for my own preservation,
had taken off the edge of my invention for my own conveniences, and I
had dropped a good design, which I had once bent my thoughts upon; and
that was, to try if I could not make some of my barley into malt, and
then try to brew myself some beer: this was really a whimsical thought,
and I reproved myself often for the simplicity of it; for I presently
saw there would be the want of several things necessary to the making my
beer, that it would be impossible for me to supply; as, first, casks to
preserve it in, which was a thing that, as I have observed already, I
could never compass; no, though I spent not many days, but weeks, nay
months, in attempting it, but to no purpose. In the next place, I had no
hops to make it keep, no yeast to make it work, no copper or kettle to
make it boil; and yet, had not all these things intervened, I mean the
frights and terrors I was in about the savages, I had undertaken it, and
perhaps brought it to pass too; for I seldom gave any thing over without
accomplishing it, when I once had it in my head enough to begin it.
But my invention now ran quite another way; for night and day I could
think of nothing, but how I might destroy some of these monsters in
their cruel bloody entertainment, and, if possible, save the victim they
should bring hither to destroy. It would take up a larger volume than
this whole work is intended to be, to set down all the contrivances I
hatched, or rather brooded upon in my thoughts, for the destroying these
creatures, or at least frightening them, so as to prevent their coming
hither any more; but all was abortive; nothing could be possible to take
effect, unless I was to be there to do it myself; and what could one man
do among them, when perhaps there might be twenty or thirty of them
together, with their darts, or their bows and arrows, with which they
could shoot as true to a mark as I could with my gun?
Sometimes I contrived to dig a hole under the place where they made
their fire, and put in five or six pounds of gunpowder, which, when they
kindled their fire, would consequently take fire, and blow up all that
was near it; but, as in the first place I should be very loath to waste
so much powder upon them, my store being now within the quantity of a
barrel, so neither could I be sure of its going off at any certain time,
when it might surprise them; and, at best, that it would do little more
than just blow the fire about their ears, and fright them, but not
sufficient to make them forsake the place; so I laid it aside, and then
proposed, that I would place myself in ambush in some convenient place,
with my three guns all double-loaded, and in the middle of their bloody
ceremony let fly at them, when I should be sure to kill or wound perhaps
two or three at every shoot; and then falling in upon them with my three
pistols, and my sword, I made no doubt but that, if there were twenty, I
should kill them all: this fancy pleased my thoughts for some weeks, and
I was so full of it that I often dreamed of it; and sometimes, that I
was just going to let fly at them in my sleep.
I went so far with it in my indignation, that I employed myself several
days to find out proper places to put myself in ambuscade, as I said, to
watch for them; and I went frequently to the place itself, which was now
grown more familiar to me; and especially while my mind was thus filled
with thoughts of revenge, and of a bloody putting twenty or thirty of
them to the sword, as I may call it; but the horror I had at the place,
and at the signals of the barbarous wretches devouring one another,
abated my malice.
Well, at length I found a place in the side of the hill, where I was
satisfied I might securely wait till I saw any of the boats coming, and
might then, even before they would be ready to come on shore, convey
myself unseen into thickets of trees, in one of which there was an
hollow large enough to conceal me entirely; and where I might sit, and
observe all their bloody doings, and take my full aim at their heads,
when they were so close together, as that it would be next to impossible
that I should miss my shoot, or that I could fail wounding three or four
of them at the first shoot.
In this place then I resolved to fix my design; and accordingly I
prepared two muskets and my ordinary fowling-piece. The two muskets I
loaded with a brace of slugs each, and four or five smaller bullets,
about the size of pistol-bullets, and the fowling-piece I loaded with
near an handful of swan-shot, of the largest size; I also loaded my
pistols with about four bullets each: and in this posture, well provided
with ammunition for a second and third charge, I prepared myself for my
expedition.
After I had thus laid the scheme for my design, and in my imagination
put it in practice, I continually made my tour every morning up to the
top of the hill, which was from my castle, as I called it, about three
miles or more, to see if I could observe any boats upon the sea, coming
near the island, or standing over towards it; but I began to tire of
this hard duty, after I had for two or three months constantly kept my
watch; but came always back without any discovery, there having not in
all that time been the least appearance, not only on or near the shore,
but not on the whole ocean, so far as my eyes or glasses could reach
every way.
As long as I kept up my daily tour to the hill to look out, so long also
I kept up the vigour of my design, and my spirits seemed to be all the
while in a suitable frame for so outrageous an execution, as the killing
twenty or thirty naked savages for an offence, which I had not at all
entered into a discussion of in my thoughts, any further than my
passions were at first fired by the horror I conceived at the unnatural
custom of the people of that country, who, it seems, had been suffered
by Providence, in his wise disposition of the world, to have no other
guide than that of their own abominable and vitiated passions; and
consequently were left, and perhaps had been for some ages, to act such
horrid things, and receive such dreadful customs, as nothing but nature,
entirely abandoned of Heaven, and actuated by some hellish degeneracy,
could have run them into; but now, when, as I have said, I began to be
weary of the fruitless excursion which I had made so long, and so far,
every morning in vain; so my opinion of the action itself began to
alter, and I began, with cooler and calmer thoughts, to consider what it
was I was going to engage in; what authority or call I had to pretend to
be judge and executioner upon these men as criminals, whom Heaven had
thought fit for so many ages to suffer, unpunished, to go on, and to be,
as it were, the executioners of his judgments upon one another; also,
how far these people were offenders against me, and what right I had to
engage in the quarrel of that blood, which they shed promiscuously one
upon another. I debated this very often with myself thus: How do I know
what God himself judges in this particular case? It is certain these
people do not commit this as a crime; it is not against their own
consciences reproving, or their light reproaching them. They do not know
it to be an offence, and then commit it in defiance of divine justice,
as we do in almost all the sins we commit. They think it no more a crime
to kill a captive taken in war, than we do to kill an ox; nor to eat
human flesh, than we do to eat mutton.
When I had considered this a little, it followed necessarily, that I was
certainly in the wrong in it; that these people were not murderers in
the sense that I had before condemned them in my thoughts, any more than
those Christians were murderers, who often put to death the prisoners
taken in battle; or more frequently, upon many occasions, put whole
troops of men to the sword, without giving quarter, though they threw
down their arms and submitted.
In the next place, it occurred to me, that albeit the usage they gave
one another was thus brutish and inhuman, yet it was really nothing to
me: these people had done me no injury: that if they attempted me, or I
saw it necessary for my immediate preservation to fall upon them,
something might be said for it; but that I was yet out of their power,
and they had really no knowledge of me, and consequently no design upon
me; and therefore it could not be just for me to fall upon them: that
this would justify the conduct of the Spaniards, in all their
barbarities practised in America, where they destroyed millions of these
people, who, however they were idolaters and barbarians, and had several
bloody and barbarous rites in these customs, such as sacrificing human
bodies to their idols, were yet, as to the Spaniards, very innocent
people; and that the rooting them out of the country is spoken of with
the utmost abhorrence and detestation, even by the Spaniards themselves,
at this time, and by all other Christian nations of Europe, as a mere
butchery, a bloody and unnatural piece of cruelty, unjustifiable either
to God or man; and such, as for which the very name of a Spaniard is
reckoned to be frightful and terrible to all people of humanity, or of
Christian compassion: as if the kingdom of Spain were particularly
eminent for the product of a race of men, who were without principles of
tenderness, or the common bowels of pity to the miserable, which is
reckoned to be a mark of a generous temper in the mind.
These considerations really put me to a pause, and to a kind of a full
stop; and I began by little and little to be off of my design, and to
conclude I had taken a wrong measure in my resolutions to attack the
savages; that it was not my business to meddle with them, unless they
first attacked me, and this it was my business, if possible, to prevent;
but that, if I were discovered and attacked, then I knew my duty.
On the other hand, I argued with myself that this really was the way not
to deliver myself, but entirely to ruin and destroy myself; for unless I
was sure to kill every one that not only should be on shore at that
time, but that should ever come on shore afterwards, if but one of them
escaped to tell their country-people what had happened, they would come
over again by thousands to revenge the death of their fellows; and I
should only bring upon myself a certain destruction, which at present I
had no manner of occasion for.
Upon the whole, I concluded, that neither in principles nor in policy, I
ought one way or other to concern myself in this affair: that my
business was, by all possible means to conceal myself from them, and not
to leave the least signal to them to guess by, that there were any
living creatures upon the island, I mean of human shape.
Religion joined in with this prudential, and I was convinced now many
ways that I was perfectly out of my duty, when I was laying all my
bloody schemes for the destruction of innocent creatures, I mean
innocent as to me; as to the crimes they were guilty of towards one
another, I had nothing to do with them; they were national punishments
to make a just retribution for national offences; and to bring public
judgments upon those who offend in a public manner, by such ways as best
please God.
This appeared so clear to me now, that nothing was a greater
satisfaction to me, than that I had not been suffered to do a thing
which I now saw so much reason to believe would have been no less a sin
than that of wilful murder, if I had committed it; and I gave most
humble thanks on my knees to God, that had thus delivered me from
blood-guiltiness; beseeching him to grant me the protection of his
Providence, that I might not fall into the hands of barbarians; or that
I might not lay my hands upon them, unless I had a more clear call from
Heaven to do it, in defence of my own life.
In this disposition I continued for near a year after this: and so far
was I from desiring an occasion for falling upon these wretches, that in
all that time I never once went up the hill to see whether there were
any of them in sight, or to know whether any of them had been on shore
there, or not; that I might not be tempted to renew any of my
contrivances against them, or be provoked, by any advantage which might
present itself, to fall upon them; only this I did, I went and removed
my boat, which I had on the other side of the island, and carried it
down to the east end of the whole island, where I ran it into a little
cove which I found under some high rocks, and where I knew, by reason of
the currents, the savages durst not, at least would not, come with their
boats upon any account whatsoever.
With my boat I carried away every thing that I had left there belonging
to her, though not necessary for the bare going thither; viz. a mast and
sail, which I had made for her, and a thing like an anchor, but indeed
which could not be called either anchor or grappling; however, it was
the best I could make of its kind. All these I removed, that there might
not be the least shadow of any discovery, or any appearance of any boat,
or of any habitation upon the island.
Besides this, I kept myself, as I said, more retired than ever, and
seldom went from my cell, other than upon my constant employment, viz.
to milk my she-goats, and manage my little flock in the wood, which, as
it was quite on the other part of the island, was quite out of danger:
for certain it is, that these savage people, who sometimes haunted this
island, never came with any thoughts of finding any thing here, and
consequently never wandered off from the coast; and I doubt not but they
might have been several times on shore, after my apprehensions of them
had made me cautious, as well as before; and indeed I looked back with
some horror upon the thoughts of what my condition would have been, if I
had chopped upon them, and been discovered before that, when naked and
unarmed, except with one gun, and that loaded often only with small
shot. I walked every where, peeping and peering about the island, to see
what I could get: what a surprise should I have been in, if, when I
discovered the print of a man’s foot, I had instead of that seen fifteen
or twenty savages, and found them pursuing me, and, by the swiftness of
their running, no possibility of my escaping them!
The thoughts of this sometimes sunk my very soul within me, and
distressed my mind so much, that I could not soon recover it; to think
what I should have done, and how I not only should not have been able to
resist them, but even should not have had presence of mind enough to do
what I might have done; much less what now, after so much consideration
and preparation, I might be able to do. Indeed, after serious thinking
of these things, I would be very melancholy, and sometimes it would last
a great while; but I resolved it at last all into thankfulness to that
Providence which had delivered me from so many unseen dangers, and had
kept me from those mischiefs, which I could no way have been the agent
in delivering myself from; because I had not the least notion of any
such thing depending, or the least supposition of its being possible.
This renewed a contemplation, which often had come to my thoughts in
former time, when first I began to see the merciful dispositions of
Heaven, in the dangers we run through in this life; how wonderfully we
are delivered when we know nothing of it: how, when we are in a
quandary, (as we call it) a doubt or hesitation, whether to go this way,
or that way, a secret hint shall direct us this way, when we intended to
go another way; nay, when sense, our own inclination, and perhaps
business, has called to go the other way, yet a strange impression upon
the mind, from we know not what springs, and by we know not what power,
shall over-rule us to go this way; and it shall afterwards appear, that
had we gone that way which we would have gone, and even to our
imagination ought to have gone, we should have been ruined and lost;
upon these, and many like reflections, I afterwards made it a certain
rule with me, that whenever I found those secret hints, or pressings of
my mind, to doing or not doing any thing that presented, or to going
this way or that way, I never failed to obey the secret dictate; though
I knew no other reason for it, than that such a pressure, or such an
hint, hung upon my mind: I could give many examples of the success of
this conduct in the course of my life; but more especially in the latter
part of my inhabiting this unhappy island; besides many occasions which
it is very likely I might have taken notice of, if I had seen with the
same eyes then that I saw with now: but ’tis never too late to be wise;
and I cannot but advise all considering men, whose lives are attended
with such extraordinary incidents as mine, or even though not so
extraordinary, not to slight such secret intimations of Providence, let
them come from what invisible intelligence they will; that I shall not
discuss, and perhaps cannot account for; but certainly they are a proof
of the converse of spirits, and the secret communication between those
embodied, and those unembodied; and such a proof as can never be
withstood: of which I shall have occasion to give some very remarkable
instances, in the remainder of my solitary residence in this
dismal place.
I believe the reader of this will not think it strange, if I confess
that these anxieties, these constant dangers I lived in, and the concern
that was now upon me, put an end to all invention, and to all the
contrivances that I had laid for my future accommodations and
conveniences. I had the care of my safety more now upon my hands than
that of my food. I cared not to drive a nail, or chop a stick of wood
now, for fear the noise I should make should be heard; much less would I
fire a gun, for the same reason; and, above all, I was very uneasy at
making any fire, lest the smoke, which is visible at a great distance in
the day, should betray me; and for this reason I removed that part of my
business which required fire, such as burning of pots and pipes, &c.
into my new apartment in the wood; where, after I had been some time, I
found, to my unspeakable consolation, a mere natural cave in the earth,
which went in a vast way, and where, I dare say, no savage, had he been
at the mouth of it, would be so hardy as to venture in, nor indeed would
any man else, but one who, like me, wanted nothing so much as a
safe retreat.
The mouth of this hollow was at the bottom of a great rock, where, by
mere accident, (I would say, if I did not see an abundant reason to
ascribe all such things now to Providence,) I was cutting down some
thick branches of trees to make charcoal; and before I go on, I must
observe the reason of my making this charcoal, which was thus:
I was afraid of making a smoke about my habitation, as I said before;
and yet I could not live there without baking my bread, cooking my meat,
&c.; so I contrived to burn some wood here, as I had seen done in
England under turf, till it became chark, or dry coal; and then putting
the fire out, I preserved the coal to carry home, and perform the other
services, which fire was wanting for at home, without danger or smoke.
But this by the by: while I was cutting down some wood here, I perceived
that behind a very thick branch of low brushwood, or underwood, there
was a kind of hollow place: I was curious to look into it, and getting
with difficulty into the mouth of it, I found it was pretty large, that
is to say, sufficient for me to stand upright in it, and perhaps another
with me; but I must confess to you, I made more haste out than I did in,
when, looking further into the place, which was perfectly dark, I saw
two broad shining eyes of some creature, whether devil or man I knew
not, which twinkled like two stars, the dim light from the cave’s mouth
shining directly in and making the reflection.