by Daniel Defoe
that I was not able to throw myself into any thing, butdeath, that could be called worse; and if I reached the shore of themain, I might perhaps meet with relief, or I might coast along, as I didon the African shore, till I came to some inhabited country, and where Imight find some relief; and after all, perhaps, I might fall in withsome Christian ship that might take me in; and if the worst came to theworst, I could but die, which would put an end to all these miseries atonce. Pray note, all this was the fruit of a disturbed mind, animpatient temper, made desperate, as it were, by the long continuance ofmy troubles, and the disappointments I had met in the wreck I had beenon board of, and where I had been so near obtaining what I so earnestlylonged for, viz. somebody to speak to, and to learn some knowledge fromthem of the place where I was, and of the probable means of mydeliverance. I was agitated wholly by these thoughts; all my calm ofmind, in my resignation to Providence, and waiting the issue of thedispositions of Heaven, seemed to be suspended; and I had, as it were,no power to turn my thoughts to any thing but to the project of a voyageto the main; which came upon me with such force, and such an impetuosityof desire, that it was not to be resisted.
When this had agitated my thoughts for two hours or more, with suchviolence that it set my very blood into a ferment, and my pulse beat asif I had been in a fever, merely with the extraordinary fervour of mymind about it, nature, as if I had been fatigued and exhausted with thevery thought of it, threw me into a sound sleep. One would have thoughtI should have dreamed of it, but I did not, nor of any thing relatingto it: out I dreamed that as I was going out in the morning, as usual,from my castle, I saw upon the shore two canoes and eleven savagescoming to land, and that they brought with them another savage, whomthey were going to kill, in order to eat him; when, on a sudden, thesavage that they were going to kill jumped away, and ran for his life;and I thought, in my sleep, that he came running into my little thickgrove before my fortification, to hide himself; and that I, seeing himalone, and not perceiving that the others sought him that way, showedmyself to him, and smiling upon him, encouraged him: that he kneeleddown to me, seeming to pray me to assist him; upon which I showed him myladder, made him go up, and carried him into my cave, and he became myservant: and that as soon as I had got this man, I said to myself, "NowI may certainly venture to the main land; for this fellow will serve meas a pilot, and will tell me what to do, and whither to go forprovisions, and whither not to go for fear of being devoured; whatplaces to venture into, and what to shun." I waked with this thought;and was under such inexpressible impressions of joy at the prospect ofmy escape in my dream, that the disappointments which I felt upon comingto myself, and finding that it was no more than a dream, were equallyextravagant the other way, and threw me into a very great dejectionof spirits.
Upon this, however, I made this conclusion; that my only way to go aboutto attempt an escape was, if possible, to get a savage into mypossession; and, if possible, it should be one of their prisoners whomthey had condemned to be eaten, and should bring hither to kill. Butthese thoughts still were attended with this difficulty, that it wasimpossible to effect this without attacking a whole caravan of them, andkilling them all; and this was not only a very desperate attempt, andmight miscarry, but, on the other hand, I had greatly scrupled thelawfulness of it to myself; and my heart trembled at the thoughts ofshedding so much blood, though it was for my deliverance. I need notrepeat the arguments which occurred to me against this, they being thesame mentioned before: but though I had other reasons to offer now, viz.that those men were enemies to my life, and would devour me if theycould; that it was self-preservation, in the highest degree, to delivermyself from this death of a life, and was acting in my own defence asmuch as if they were actually assaulting me, and the like; I say, thoughthese things argued for it, yet the thoughts of shedding human blood formy deliverance were very terrible to me, and such as I could by no meansreconcile myself to for a great while. However, at last, after manysecret disputes with myself, and after great perplexities about it (forall these arguments, one way and another, struggled in my head a longtime,) the eager prevailing desire of deliverance at length mastered allthe rest; and I resolved, if possible, to get one of those savages intomy hands, cost what it would. My next thing was to contrive how to doit, and this indeed was very difficult to resolve on: but as I couldpitch upon no probable means for it, so I resolved to put myself uponthe watch, to see them when they came on shore, and leave the rest tothe event; taking such measures as the opportunity should present, letwhat would be.
With these resolutions in my thoughts, I set myself upon the scout asoften as possible, and indeed so often, that I was heartily tired of it;for it was above a year and a half that I waited; and for great part ofthat time went out to the west end, and to the south-west corner of theisland, almost every day, to look for canoes, but none appeared. Thiswas very discouraging, and began to trouble me much; though I cannot saythat it did in this case (as it had done some time before) wear off theedge of my desire to the thing; but the longer it seemed to be delayed,the more eager I was for it: in a word, I was not at first so careful toshun the sight of these savages, and avoid being seen by them, as I wasnow eager to be upon them. Besides, I fancied myself able to manage one,nay, two or three savages, if I had them, so as to make them entirelyslaves to me, to do whatever I should direct them, and to prevent theirbeing able at any time to do me any hurt. It was a great while that Ipleased myself with this affair; but nothing still presented; all myfancies and schemes came to nothing, for no savages came near me for agreat while.
About a year and a half after I entertained these notions (and by longmusing had, as it were, resolved them all into nothing, for want of anoccasion to put them into execution,) I was surprised, one morningearly, with seeing no less than five canoes all on shore together on myside the island, and the people who belonged to them all landed, and outof my sight. The number of them broke all my measures; for seeing somany, and knowing that they always came four or six, or sometimes more,in a boat, I could not tell what to think of it, or how to take mymeasures, to attack twenty or thirty men single-handed; so lay still inmy castle, perplexed and discomforted: however, I put myself into allthe same postures for an attack that I had formerly provided, and wasjust ready for action, if any thing had presented. Having waited a goodwhile, listening to hear if they made any noise, at length, being veryimpatient, I set my guns at the foot of my ladder, and clambered up tothe top of the hill, by my two stages, as usual; standing so, however,that my head did not appear above the hill, so that they could notperceive me by any means. Here I observed, by the help of myperspective-glass, that they were no less than thirty in number; thatthey had a fire kindled, and that they had meat dressed. How they hadcooked it I knew not, or what it was; but they were all dancing, in Iknow not how many barbarous gestures and figures, their own way,round the fire.
While I was thus looking on them, I perceived, by my perspective, twomiserable wretches dragged from the boats, where, it seems, they werelaid by, and were now brought out for the slaughter. I perceived one ofthem immediately fall, being knocked down, I suppose, with a club orwooden sword, for that was their way, and two or three others were atwork immediately, cutting him open for their cookery, while the othervictim was left standing by himself, till they should be ready for him.In that very moment, this poor wretch seeing himself a little atliberty, and unbound, nature inspired him with hopes of life, and hestarted away from them, and ran with incredible swiftness along thesands, directly towards me, I mean towards that part of the coast wheremy habitation was. I was dreadfully frightened, I must acknowledge, whenI perceived him run my way, and especially when, as I thought, I saw himpursued by the whole body: and now I expected that part of my dream wascoming to pass, and that he would certainly take shelter in my grove:but I could not depend, by any means, upon my dream for the rest of it,viz. that the other savages would not pursue him thither, and find himthere. However, I kept my station, and my spirits began to recover, whenI found tha
t there was not above three men that followed him; and stillmore was I encouraged when I found that he outstripped them exceedinglyin running, and gained ground of them; so that if he could but hold itfor half an hour, I saw easily he would fairly get away from them all.
There was between them and my castle the creek, which I mentioned oftenin the first part of my story, where I landed my cargoes out of theship; and this I saw plainly he must necessarily swim over, or the poorwretch would be taken there: but when the savage escaping came thither,he made nothing of it, though the tide was then up; but plunging in,swam through in about thirty strokes, or thereabouts, landed, and ran onwith exceeding strength and swiftness. When the three persons came tothe creek, I found that two of them could swim, but the third couldnot, and that, standing on the other side, he looked at the others, butwent no farther, and soon after went softly back again; which, as ithappened, was very well for him in the
