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.
Never did a ship come to this part that had less business than I had;
and yet it was with great difficulty that we were admitted to hold the
least correspondence on shore. Not my partner himself, who was alive,
and made a great figure among them, not my two merchant trustees, nor
the fame of my wonderful preservation in the island, could obtain me
that favour; but my partner remembering that I had given five hundred
moidores to the prior of the monastery of the Augustines, and three
hundred and seventy-two to the poor, went to the monastery, and obliged
the prior that then was, to go to the governor, and beg leave for me
presently, with the captain, and one more, besides eight seamen, to come
on shore, and no more; and this upon condition absolutely capitulated
for, that we should not offer to land any goods out of the ship, or to
carry any person away without licence.
They were so strict with us, as to landing any goods, that it was with
extreme difficulty that I got on shore three bales of English goods,
such as fine broad-cloths, stuffs, and some linen, which I had brought
for a present to my partner.
He was a very generous, broad-hearted man, though (like me) he came from
little at first; and though he knew not that I had the least design of
giving him any thing, he sent me on board a present of fresh provisions,
wine, and sweetmeats, worth above thirty moidores, including some
tobacco, and three or four fine medals in gold. But I was even with him
in my present, which, as I have said, consisted of fine broad-cloth,
English stuffs, lace, and fine Hollands. Also, I delivered him about the
value of 100_l_. sterling, in the same goods, for other uses: and I
obliged him to set up the sloop which I had brought with me from
England, as I have said, for the use of my colony, in order to send the
refreshments I intended to my plantation.
Accordingly he got hands, and finished the sloop in a very few days, for
she was already framed; and I gave the master of her such instruction as
he could not miss the place; nor did he miss it, as I had an account
from my partner afterwards. I got him soon loaded with the small cargo I
had sent them; and one of our seamen, that had been on shore with me
there, offered to go with the sloop, and settle there, upon my letter
to the governor Spaniard, to allot him a sufficient quantity of land for
a plantation; and giving him some clothes, and tools for his planting
work, which he said he understood, having been an old planter in
Maryland, and a buccaneer into the bargain.
I encouraged the fellow by granting all he desired; and, as an addition,
I gave him the savage which we had taken prisoner of war, to be his
slave, and ordered the governor Spaniard to give him his share of
everything he wanted, with the rest.
When we came to fit this man out, my old partner told me, there was a
certain very honest fellow, a Brasil planter of his acquaintance, who
had fallen into the displeasure of the church: “I know not what the
matter is with him,” says he, “but, on my conscience, I think he is a
heretic in his heart; and he has been obliged to conceal himself for
fear of the Inquisition;” that he would be very glad of such an
opportunity to make his escape, with his wife and two daughters; and if
I would let them go to the island, and allot them a plantation, he would
give them a small stock to begin with; for the officers of the
Inquisition had seized all his effects and estate, and he had nothing
left but a little household stuff, and two slaves; “And,” adds he,
“though I hate his principles, yet I would not have him fall into their
hands, for he will assuredly be burnt alive if he does.”
I granted this presently, and joined my Englishman with them; and we
concealed the man, and his wife and daughters, on board our ship, till
the sloop put out to go to sea; and then (having put all their goods on
board the sloop some time before) we put them on board the sloop, after
she was got out of the bay.
Our seaman was mightily pleased with this new partner; and their stock,
indeed, was much alike, rich in tools, and in preparations, for a farm;
but nothing to begin with, but as above. However, they carried over with
them (which was worth all the rest) some materials for planting
sugar-canes, with some plants of canes; which he (I mean the Portugal
man) understood very well.
Among the rest of the supplies sent my tenants in the island, I sent
them, by this sloop, three milch-cows and five calves, about twenty-two
hogs, among them, three sows big with pig, two mares, and a stone-horse.
For my Spaniards, according to my promise, I engaged three Portugal
women to go; and recommended it to them to marry them, and use them
kindly. I could have procured more women, but I remembered that the poor
persecuted man had two daughters, and there were but five of the
Spaniards that wanted; the rest had wives of their own, though in
another country.
All this cargo arrived safe, and, as you may easily suppose, very
welcome to my old inhabitants, who were now (with this addition) between
sixty and seventy people, besides little children; of which there were a
great many: I found letters at London from them all, by way of Lisbon,
when I came back to England, being sent back to the Brasils by this
sloop; of which I shall take some notice in its place.
I have now done with my island, and all manner of discourse about it;
and whoever reads the rest of my memorandums, would do well to turn his
thoughts entirely from it, and expect to read only of the follies of an
old man, not warned by his own harms, much less by those of other men,
to beware of the like; not cooled by almost forty years misery and
disappointments; not satisfied with prosperity beyond expectation; not
made cautious by affliction and distress beyond irritation.