The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808)
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you will leave it to us; for, as there is no doubt but theywill come to us again when their passion is over, being not able tosubsist without our assistance, we promise you to make no peace withthem, without having full satisfaction for you; and upon this conditionwe hope you will promise to use no violence with them, other than inyour defence."
The two Englishmen; yielded to this very awkwardly and with greatreluctance; but the Spaniards protested, they did it only to keep themfrom bloodshed, and to make all easy at last; "For," said they, "we arenot so many of us; here is room enough for us all, and it is great pitywe should not be all good friends." At length they did consent, andwaited for the issue of the thing, living for some days with theSpaniards; for their own habitation was destroyed.
In about five days time the three vagrants, tired with wandering, andalmost starved with hunger, having chiefly lived on turtles' eggs allthat while, came back to the grove: and finding my Spaniard, who, as Ihave said, was the governor, and two more with him, walking by the sideof the creek; they came up in a very submissive humble manner, andbegged to be received again into the family. The Spaniards used themcivilly, but told them, they had acted so unnaturally by theircountrymen, and so very grossly by them, (the Spaniards) that they couldnot come to any conclusion without consulting the two Englishmen, andthe rest; but however they would go to them and discourse about it, andthey should know in half-an-hour. It may be guessed that they were veryhard put to it; for, as they were to wait this half-hour for an answer,they begged they would send them out some bread in the meantime, whichthey did, sending at the same time a large piece of goat's flesh and aboiled parrot, which they ate very eagerly.
After half-an-hour's consultation they were called in, and a long debateensued, their two countrymen charging them with the ruin of all theirlabour, and a design to murder them; all which they owned before, andtherefore could not deny now. Upon the whole, the Spaniards acted themoderators between them; and as they had obliged the two Englishmen notto hurt the three while they were naked and unarmed, so they now obligedthe three to go and rebuild their fellows' two huts, one to be of thesame and the other of larger dimensions than they were before; to fencetheir ground again, plant trees in the room of those pulled up, dig upthe land again for planting corn, and, in a word, to restore everythingto the same state as they found it, that is, as near as they could.
Well, they submitted to all this; and as they had plenty of provisionsgiven them all the while, they grew very orderly, and the whole societybegan to live pleasantly and agreeably together again; only that thesethree fellows could never be persuaded to work--I mean forthemselves--except now and then a little, just as they pleased. However,the Spaniards told them plainly that if they would but live sociably andfriendly together, and study the good of the whole plantation, theywould be content to work for them, and let them walk about and be asidle as they pleased; and thus, having lived pretty well together for amonth or two, the Spaniards let them have arms again, and gave themliberty to go abroad with them as before.
It was not above a week after they had these arms, and went abroad,before the ungrateful creatures began to be as insolent and troublesomeas ever. However, an accident happened presently upon this, whichendangered the safety of them all, and they were obliged to lay by allprivate resentments, and look to the preservation of their lives.
It happened one night that the governor, the Spaniard whose life I hadsaved, who was now the governor of the rest, found himself very uneasyin the night, and could by no means get any sleep: he was perfectly wellin body, only found his thoughts tumultuous; his mind ran upon menfighting and killing one another; but he was broad awake, and could notby any means get any sleep; in short, he lay a great while, but growingmore and more uneasy, he resolved to rise. As they lay, being so many ofthem, on goat-skins laid thick upon such couches and pads as they madefor themselves, so they had little to do, when they were willing torise, but to get upon their feet, and perhaps put on a coat, such as itwas, and their pumps, and they were ready for going any way that theirthoughts guided them. Being thus got up, he looked out; but being dark,he could see little or nothing, and besides, the trees which I hadplanted, and which were now grown tall, intercepted his sight, so thathe could only look up, and see that it was a starlight night, andhearing no noise, he returned and lay down again; but to no purpose; hecould not compose himself to anything like rest; but his thoughts wereto the last degree uneasy, and he knew not for what.
Having made some noise with rising and walking about, going out andcoming in, another of them waked, and, calling, asked who it was thatwas up? The governor told him how it had been with him. "Say you so?"says the other Spaniard; "such things are not to be slighted, I assureyou; there is certainly some mischief working," says he, "near us;" andpresently he asked him, "Where are the Englishmen?" "They are all intheir huts," says he, "safe enough." It seems, the Spaniards had keptpossession of the main apartment, and had made a place, where the threeEnglishmen, since their last mutiny, always quartered by themselves, andcould not come at the rest. "Well," says the Spaniard, "there issomething in it, I am persuaded from my own experience; I am satisfiedour spirits embodied have converse with, and receive intelligence from,the spirits unembodied, and inhabiting the invisible world; and thisfriendly notice is given for our advantage, if we know how to make useof it. Come," says he, "let us go out and look abroad; and if we findnothing at all in it to justify our trouble, I'll tell you a story ofthe purpose, that shall convince you of the justice of my proposing it."
In a word, they went out to go to the top of the hill, where I used togo; but they, being strong, and in good company, nor alone, as I was,used none of my cautions to go up by the ladder, and then pulling it upafter them, to go up a second stage to the top but were going roundthrough the grove unconcerned and unwary, when they were surprised withseeing a light as of fire, a very little way off from them, and hearingthe voices of men, not of one or two, but of a great number.
In all the discoveries I had made of the savage landing on the island,it was my constant care to prevent them making the least discovery ofthere being any inhabitant upon the place; and when by any necessitythey came to know it, they felt it so effectively, that they that gotaway, were scarce able to give any account of it, for we disappeared assoon as possible, nor did ever any that had seen me, escape to tell anyone else, except it were the three savages in our last encounter, whojumped into the boat, of whom I mentioned that I was afraid they shouldgo home, and bring more help.
Whether it was the consequence of the escape of those men, that so greata number came now together; or whether they came ignorantly, and byaccident, on their usual bloody errand, the Spaniards could not, itseems, understand: but whatever it was, it had been their business,either to have: concealed themselves, and not have seen them at all;much less to have let the savages have seen, that there were anyinhabitants in the place; but to have fallen upon them so effectually,as that not a man of them should have escaped, which could only havebeen by getting in between them and their boats: but this presence ofmind was wanting to them; which was the ruin of their tranquillity for agreat while.
We need not doubt but that the governor, and the man with him, surprisedwith this sight, ran back immediately, and raised their fellows, givingthem an account of the imminent danger they were all in; and they againas readily took the alarm, but it was impossible to persuade them tostay close within where they were, but that they must all run out to seehow things stood.
While it was dark indeed, they were well enough, and they hadopportunity enough, for some hours, to view them by the light of threefires they had made at some distance from one another; what they weredoing they knew not, and what to do themselves they knew not; for,first, the enemy were too many; and, secondly, they did not keeptogether, but were divided into several parties, and were on shore inseveral places.
The Spaniards were in no small consternation at this sight; and as theyfound that the fellows ran straggling all over the shore
, they made nodoubt, but, first or last, some of them would chop in upon theirhabitation, or upon some other place, where they would see the tokens ofinhabitants; and they were in great perplexity also for fear of theirflock of goats, which would have been little less than starving them, ifthey should have been destroyed; so the first thing they resolved upon,was to dispatch three men away before it was light, viz. two Spaniardsand one Englishman, to drive all the goats away to the great valleywhere the cave was, and, if need were, to drive them into the verycave itself.
Could they have seen the savages all together in one body, and at adistance from their canoes, they resolved, if there had been an hundredof them, to have attacked them; but that could not be obtained, forthere were some of them two miles off from the other, and, as itappeared afterwards, were of two different nations.
After having