mere accident (I would say, if I did not see 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 for
which fire was wanting, without danger of smoke. But this is by the
by:--While I was cutting down some wood here, I perceived that behind a
very thick branch of low brush-wood, or under-wood, there was a kind of
hollow place: I was curious to look in 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 that I made more haste out than I did in,
when, looking farther into the place, and 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. However, after some
pause, I recovered myself, and began to call myself a thousand fools,
and to think, that he that was afraid to see the devil was not fit to
live twenty years in an island all alone; and that I might well think
there was nothing in this cave that was more frightful than myself. Upon
this, plucking up my courage, I took up a firebrand, and in I rushed
again, with the stick flaming in my hand: I had not gone three steps in,
but I was almost as much frightened as I was before; for I heard a very
loud sigh, like that of a man in some pain, and it was followed by a
broken noise, as of words half-expressed, and then a deep sigh again. I
stepped back, and was indeed struck with such a surprise, that it put me
into a cold sweat; and if I had had a hat on my head, I will not answer
for it, that my hair might not have lifted it off. But still plucking up
my spirits as well as I could, and encouraging myself a little with
considering that the power and presence of God was every where, and was
able to protect me, upon this I stepped forward again, and by the light
of the firebrand, holding it up a little over my head, I saw lying on
the ground a most monstrous, frightful, old he-goat just making his
will, as we say, and gasping for life; and dying, indeed, of mere old
age. I stirred him a little to see if I could get him out, and he
essayed to get up, but was not able to raise himself; and I thought with
myself he might even lie there; for if he had frightened me, so he would
certainly fright any of the savages, if any one of them should be so
hardy as to come in there while he had any life in him.
I was now recovered from my surprise, and began to look round me, when I
found the cave was but very small, that is to say, it might be about
twelve feet over, but in no manner of shape, neither round nor square,
no hands having ever been employed in making it but those of mere
Nature. I observed also that there was a place at the farther side of it
that went in further, but was so low that it required me to creep upon
my hands and knees to go into it, and whither it went I knew not: so
having no candle, I gave it over for that time; but resolved to come
again the next day, provided with candles and a tinder-box, which I had
made of the lock of one of the muskets, with some wild fire in the pan.
Accordingly, the next day I came provided with six large candles of my
own making (for I made very good candles now of goats' tallow, but was
hard set for candle-wick, using sometimes rags or rope-yarn, and
sometimes the dried rind of a weed like nettles;) and going into this
low place, I was obliged to creep upon all fours, as I have said, almost
ten yards; which, by the way, I thought was a venture bold enough,
considering that I knew not how far it might go, nor what was beyond it.
When I had got through the strait, I found the roof rose higher up, I
believe near twenty feet; but never was such a glorious sight seen in
the island, I dare say, as it was, to look round the sides and roof of
this vault or cave; the wall reflected an hundred thousand lights to me
from my two candles. What it was in the rock, whether diamonds, or any
other precious stones, or gold, which I rather supposed it to be, I
knew not. The place I was in was a most delightful cavity or grotto of
its kind, as could be expected, though perfectly dark; the floor was dry
and level, and had a sort of a small loose gravel upon it, so that there
was no nauseous or venomous creature to be seen, neither was there any
damp or wet on the sides or roof: the only difficulty in it was the
entrance; which, however, as it was a place of security, and such a
retreat as I wanted, I thought that was a convenience; so that I was
really rejoiced at the discovery, and resolved, without any delay, to
bring some of those things which I was most anxious about to this place;
particularly, I resolved to bring hither my magazine of powder, and all
my spare arms, viz. two fowling-pieces, for I had three in all, and
three muskets, for of them I had eight in all: so I kept at my castle
only five, which stood ready-mounted, like pieces of cannon, on my
outmost fence; and were ready also to take out upon any expedition. Upon
this occasion of removing my ammunition, I happened to open the barrel
of powder, which I took up out of the sea, and which had been wet; and I
found that the water had penetrated about three or four inches into the
powder on every side, which, caking, and growing hard, had preserved the
inside like a kernel in the shell; so that I had near sixty pounds of
very good powder in the centre of the cask: this was a very agreeable
discovery to me at that time; so I carried all away thither, never
keeping above two or three pounds of powder with me in my castle, for
fear of a surprise of any kind: I also carried thither all the lead I
had left for bullets.
I fancied myself now like one of the ancient giants, which were said to
live in caves and holes in the rocks, where none could come at them; for
I persuaded myself, while I was here, that if five hundred savages were
to hunt me, they could never find me out; or, if they did, they would
not venture to attack me here. The old goat, whom I found expiring, died
in the mouth of the cave the next day after I made this discovery: and I
found it much easier to dig a great hole there, and throw him in and
cover him with earth, than to drag him out; so I interred him there, to
prevent offence to my nose.
I was now in the twenty-third year of my residence in this island; and
was so naturalized to the place, and the manner of living, that could I
have but enjoyed the certainty that no savages would come to the place
to disturb me, I could have been content to have capitulated for
spending the rest of my time there, even to the last moment, till I had
laid me down and died, like the old goat in the cave. I had also arrived
to some little diversions and amusements, which made the time pass a
great deal more pleasantly with me than it did before: as, first, I had
taught my Pol, as I noted before, to speak; and he did it so familiarly,
and talked so articulately and plain, that it was very pleasant to me;
for I believe no bird ever spoke plainer; and he lived with me no less
than six and twenty years: how long he might have lived afterwards I
know not, though I know they have a notion in the Brazils that they
live a hundred years. My dog was a very pleasant and loving companion to
me for no less than sixteen years of my time, and then died of mere old
age. As for my cats, they multiplied, as I have observed, to that
degree, that I was obliged to shoot several of them at first, to keep
them from devouring me and all I had; but, at length, when the two old
ones I brought with me were gone, and after some time continually
driving them from me, and letting them have no provision with me, they
all ran wild into the woods, except two or three favourites, which I
kept tame, and whose young, when they had any, I always drowned; and
these were part of my family. Besides these, I always kept two or three
household kids about me, whom I taught to feed out of my hand; and I had
two more parrots, which talked pretty well, and would all call Robin
Crusoe, but none like my first; nor, indeed, did I take the pains with
any of them that I had done with him. I had also several tame sea-fowls,
whose names I knew not, that I caught upon the shore, and cut their
wings; and the little stakes which I had planted before my castle wall
being now grown up to a good thick grove, these fowls all lived among
these low trees, and bred there, which was very agreeable to me; so
that, as I said above, I began to be very well contented with the life I
led, if I could have been secured from the dread of the savages. But it
was otherwise directed; and it may not be amiss for all people who shall
meet with my story, to make this just observation from it, viz. How
frequently, in the course of our lives, the evil which in itself we seek
most to shun, and which, when we are, fallen into, is the most dreadful
to us, is oftentimes the very means or door of our deliverance, by which
alone we can be raised again from the affliction we are fallen into. I
could give many examples of this in the course of my unaccountable life;
but in nothing was it more particularly remarkable than in the
circumstances of my last years of solitary residence in this island.
It was now the month of December, as I said above, in my twenty-third
year; and this, being the southern solstice (for winter I cannot call
it,) was the particular time of my harvest, and required my being pretty
much abroad in the fields: when going out pretty early in the morning,
even before it was thorough daylight, I was surprised with seeing a
light of some fire upon the shore, at a distance from me of about two
miles, towards the end of the island where I had observed some savages
had been, as before, and not on the other side; but, to my great
affliction, it was on my side of the island.
I was indeed terribly surprised at the sight, and stopped short within
my grove, not daring to go out, lest I might be surprised, and yet I had
no more peace within, from the apprehensions I had that if these
savages, in rambling over the island, should find my corn standing or
cut, or any of my works and improvements, they would immediately
conclude that there were people in the place, and would then never give
over till they had found me out. In this extremity, I went back directly
to my castle, pulled up the ladder after me, and made all things without
look as wild and natural as I could.
Then I prepared myself within, putting myself in a posture of defence:
I loaded all my cannon, as I called them, that is to say, my muskets,
which were mounted upon my new fortification, and all my pistols, and
resolved to defend myself to the last gasp; not forgetting seriously to
commend myself to the divine protection, and earnestly to pray to God to
deliver me out of the hands of the barbarians. I continued in this
posture about two hours; and began to be mighty impatient for
intelligence abroad, for I had no spies to send out. After sitting
awhile longer, and musing what I should do in this, I was not able to
bear sitting in ignorance any longer; so setting up my ladder to the
side of the hill, where there was a flat place, as I observed before,
and then pulling the ladder up after me, I set it up again, and mounted
to the top of the hill; and pulling out my perspective-glass, which I
had taken on purpose, I laid me down flat on my belly on the ground, and
began to look for the place. I presently found there were no less than
nine naked savages, sitting round a small fire they had made, not to
warm them, for they had no need of that, the weather being extremely
hot, but, as I supposed, to dress some of their barbarous diet of human
flesh, which they had brought with them, whether alive or dead, I
could not tell.
They had two canoes with them, which they had hauled up upon the shore;
and as it was then tide of ebb, they seemed to me to wait for the return
of the flood to go away again. It is not easy to imagine what confusion
this sight put me into, especially seeing them come on my side of the
island, and so near me too; but when I considered their coming must be
always with the current of the ebb, I began, afterwards, to be more
sedate in my mind, being satisfied that I might go abroad with safety
all the time of the tide of flood, if they were not on shore before: and
having made this observation, I went abroad about my harvest-work with
the more composure.
As I expected, so it proved; for as soon as the tide made to the
westward, I saw them all take boat, and row (or paddle, as we call it)
away. I should have observed, that for an hour or more before they went
off, they went a dancing; and I could easily discern their postures and
gestures by my glass. I could not perceive, by my nicest observation,
but that they were stark naked, and had not the least covering upon
them; but whether they were men or women, I could not distinguish.
As soon as I saw them shipped and gone, I took two guns upon my
shoulders, and two pistols in my girdle, and my great sword by my side,
without a scabbard, and with all the speed I was able to make, went away
to the hill where I had discovered the first appearance of all; and as
soon as I got thither, which was not in less than two hours (for I could
not go apace, being so loaden with arms as I was,) I perceived there had
been three canoes more of savages at that place; and looking out
farther, I saw they were all at sea together, making over for the main.
This was a dreadful sight to me, especially as, going down to the shore,
I could see the marks of horror, which the dismal work they had been
about had left behind it, viz. the blood, the bones, and part of the
flesh, of human bodies, eaten and devoured by those wretches with
merriment and sport. I was so filled with indignation at the sight, that
I now began to premeditate the destruction of the next that I saw there,
let them be whom or how many soever. It seemed evident to me that the
visits which they made thus to this island were not very frequent, for
it was above fifteen months before any more of them came on shore there
again; that is to say, I neither saw them; nor any footsteps or signals
of them, in all that time; for, as to the rainy seasons, then they are
sure not to come abroad, at least not so far: yet all this while I lived
uncomfortably, by reason of the constant apprehensions of their coming
upon me by surprise: from whence I observe, that the expectation of evil
is more bitter than the suffering, especially if there is no room to
shake off that expectation, or those apprehensions.
During all this time I was in the murdering humour, and took up most of
my hours, which should have been better employed, in contriving how to
circumvent and fall upon them, the very next time I should see them;
especially if they should be divided, as they were the last time, into
two parties: nor did I consider at all, that if I killed one party,
suppose ten or a dozen, I was still the next day, or week, or month, to
kill another, and so another, even _ad infinitum_, till I should be at
length no less a murderer than they were in being man-eaters, and
perhaps much more so. I spent my days now in great perplexity and
anxiety of mind, expecting that I should, one day or other, fall into
the hands of these merciless creatures; and if I did at any time
venture abroad, it was not without looking round me with the greatest
care and caution imaginable. And now I found, to my great comfort, how
happy it was that I had provided a tame flock or herd of goats; for I
durst not, upon any account, fire my gun, especially near that side of
the island where they usually came, lest I should alarm the savages; and
if they had fled from me now, I was sure to have them come again, with
perhaps two or three hundred canoes with them, in a few days, and then I
knew what to expect. However, I wore out a year and three months more
before I ever saw any more of the savages, and then I found them again,
as I shall soon observe. It is true, they might have been there once or
twice, but either they made no stay, or at least I did not see them: but
in the month of May, as near as I could calculate, and in my four and
twentieth year, I had a very strange encounter with them; of which in
its place.
The perturbation of my mind, during this fifteen or sixteen months'
interval, was very great; I slept unquiet, dreamed always frightful
dreams, and often started out of my sleep in the night: in the day great
troubles overwhelmed my mind; and in the night, I dreamed often of
killing the savages, and of the reasons why I might justify the doing of
it. But, to wave all this for a while.--It was in the middle of May, on
the sixteenth day, I think, as well as my poor wooden calendar would
reckon, for I marked all upon the post still; I say, it was on the
sixteenth of May that it blew a very great storm of wind all day, with a
great deal of lightning and thunder, and a very foul night it was after
it. I knew not what was the particular occasion of it, but as I was
reading in the Bible, and taken up with very serious thoughts about my
present condition, I was surprised with the noise of a gun, as I
thought, fired at sea. This was, to be sure, a surprise quite of a
different nature from any I had met with before; for the notions this
put into my thoughts were quite of another kind. I started up in the
greatest haste imaginable, and, in a trice, clapped my ladder to the
middle place of the rock, and pulled it after me; and mounting it the
second time, got to the top of the hill the very moment that a flash of
fire bid me listen for a second gun, which accordingly, in about half a
minute, I heard; and, by the sound, knew that it was from that part of
the sea where I was driven down the current in my boat. I immediately
considered that this must be some ship in distress, and that they had
some comrade, or some other ship in company, and fired these guns for
signals of distress, and to obtain help. I had the presence of mind, at
that minute, to think, that though I could not help them, it might be
they might help me: so I brought together all the dry wood I could get
at hand, and making a good handsome pile, I set it on fire upon the
hill. The wood was dry, and blazed freely; and though the wind blew very
hard, yet it burnt fairly out, so that I was certain, if there was any
such thing as a ship, they must needs see it, and no doubt they did; for
as soon as ever my fire blazed up I heard another gun, and after that
several others, all from the same quarter, I plied my fire all night
long, till daybreak; and when it was broad day, and the air cleared up,
I saw something at a great distance at sea, full east of the island,
whether a sail or a hull I could not distinguish, no, not with my glass;
the distance was so great, and the weather still something hazy also; at
least it was so out at sea.
I looked frequently at it all that day, and soon perceived that it did
not move; so I presently concluded that it was a ship at anchor; and
being eager, you may be sure, to be satisfied, I took my gun in my hand,
and ran towards the south side of the island, to the rocks where I had
formerly been carried away with the current; and getting up there, the
weather by this time being perfectly clear, I could plainly see, to my
great sorrow, the wreck of a ship, cast away in the night upon those
concealed rocks which I found when I was out in my boat; and which
rocks, as they checked the violence of the stream, and made a kind of
counter-stream, or eddy, were the occasion of my recovering from the
most desperate, hopeless condition that ever I had been in, all my life.
Thus, what is one man's safety is another man's destruction; for it
seems these men, whoever they were, being out of their knowledge, and
the rocks being wholly under water, had been driven upon them in the
night, the wind blowing hard at E.N.E. Had they seen the island, as I
must necessarily suppose they did not, they must, as I thought, have
endeavoured to have saved themselves on shore by the help of their boat;
but their firing off guns for help, especially when they saw, as I
imagined, my fire, filled me with many thoughts: first, I imagined that
upon seeing my light, they might have put themselves into their boat,
and endeavoured to make the shore; but that the sea going very high,
they might have been cast away: other times I imagined that they might
have lost their boat before, as might be the case many ways; as,
particularly, by the breaking of the sea upon their ship, which many
times obliges men to stave, or take in pieces, their boat, and sometimes
to throw it overboard with their own hands: other times I imagined they
had some other ship or ships in company, who, upon the signals of
distress they had made, had taken them up and carried them off: other
times I fancied they were all gone off to sea in their boat, and being
hurried away by the current that I had been formerly in, were carried
out into the great ocean, where there was nothing but misery and
perishing; and that, perhaps, they might by this time think of starving,
and of being in a condition to eat one another.
As all these were but conjectures at best, so, in the condition I was
in, I could do no more than look on upon the misery of the poor men, and
pity them; which had still this good effect on my side, that it gave me
more and more cause to give thanks to God, who had so happily and
comfortably provided for me in my desolate condition; and that of two
ships' companies who were now cast away upon this part of the world, not
one life should be spared but mine. I learned here again to observe,
that it is very rare that the providence of God casts us into any
condition of life so low, or any misery so great, but we may see
something or other to be thankful for, and may see others in worse
circumstances than our own. Such certainly was the case of these men, of
whom I could not so much as see room to suppose any of them were saved;
nothing could make it rational so much as to wish or expect that they
did not all perish there, except the possibility only of their being
taken up by another ship in company; and this was but mere possibility
indeed, for I saw not the least sign or appearance of any such thing. I
cannot explain, by any possible energy of words, what a strange longing
or hankering of desires I felt in my soul upon this sight, breaking out
sometimes thus: "O that there had been but one or two, nay, or but one
soul, saved out of this ship, to have escaped to me, that I might but
have had one companion, one fellow-creature to have spoken to me, and to
have conversed with!" In all the time of my solitary life, I never felt
so earnest, so strong a desire after the society of my fellow-creatures,
or so deep a regret at the want of it.
There are some secret moving springs in the affections, which, when they
are set a going by some object in view, or, though not in view, yet
rendered present to the mind by the power of imagination, that motion
carries out the soul, by its impetuosity, to such violent, eager
embracings of the object, that the absence of it is insupportable. Such
were these earnest wishings that but one man had been saved. I believe I
repeated the words, "O that it had been but one!" a thousand times; and
my desires were so moved by it, that when I spoke the words my hands
would clinch together, and my fingers would press the palms of my
hands, so that if I had had any soft thing in my hand, it would have
crushed it involuntarily; and the teeth in my head would strike
together, and set against one another so strong, that for some time I
could not part them again. Let the naturalists explain these things, and
the reason and manner of them: all I can say to them is, to describe the
fact, which was even surprising to me, when I found it, though I knew
not from whence it proceeded: it was doubtless the effect of ardent
wishes, and of strong ideas formed in my mind, realizing the comfort
which the conversation of one of my fellow-christians would have been to
me.--But it was not to be; either their fate or mine, or both, forbade
it: for, till the last year of my being on this island, I never knew
whether any were saved out of that ship or no; and had only the
affliction, some days after, to see the corpse of a drowned boy come on
shore at the end of the island which was next the shipwreck. He had no
clothes on but a seaman's waistcoat, a pair of open-kneed linen drawers,
and a blue linen shirt; but nothing to direct me so much as to guess
what nation he was of: he had nothing in his pockets but two
pieces-of-eight and a tobacco-pipe;--the last was to me of ten times
more value than the first.