The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808)
Page 96
have been afteror at a good dinner; but when I waked, I was exceedingly sunk in myspirits to find myself in the extremity of famine; the last glass ofwine we had I drank, and put sugar into it, because of its having somespirit to supply nourishment; but there being no substance in thestomach for the digesting office to work upon, I found the only effectof the wine was to raise disagreeable fumes from the stomach into thehead; and I lay, as they told me, stupid and senseless as one drunk forsome time.
"The third day in the morning, after a night of strange and confusedinconsistent dreams, and rather dozing than sleeping, I awaked ravenousand furious with hunger; and I question, had not my understandingreturned and conquered it, I say, I question whether, if I had been amother, and had had a little child with me, its life would have beensafe or no.
"This lasted about three hours, during which time I was twice raging madas any creature in Bedlam, as my young master told me, and as he can nowinform you.
"In one of these fits of lunacy or distraction, whether by the motion ofthe ship or some slip of my foot I know not, I fell down, and struck myface against the corner of a pallet-bed, in which my mistress lay, andwith the blow the blood gushed out of my nose, and the cabin-boybringing 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 theflame or the fever I was in abated, and so did the ravenous part ofthe hunger.
"Then I grew sick, and retched to vomit, but could not, for I hadnothing 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, andthen had a most dreadful pain in my stomach, not to be described, notlike the colic, but a gnawing eager pain for food, and towards night itwent off with a kind of earnest wishing or longing for food, somethinglike, as I suppose, the longing of a woman with child. I took anotherdraught of water with sugar in it, but my stomach loathed the sugar, andbrought 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 mostheartily that it would please God to take me away; and composing my mindin hopes of it, I slumbered awhile; and then waking, thought myselfdying, being light with vapours from an empty stomach: I recommended mysoul to God, and earnestly wished that somebody would throw me intothe sea.
"All this while my mistress lay by me just, as I thought, expiring, butbore it with much more patience than I, and gave the last bit of breadshe had to her child, my young master, who would not have taken it, butshe 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 intoa violent passion of crying, and after that had a second fit of violenthunger, so that I got up ravenous, and in a most dreadful condition. Hadmy mistress been dead, so much as I loved her, I am certain I shouldhave eaten a piece of her flesh with as much relish and as unconcernedas ever I did the flesh of any creature appointed for food; and once ortwice I was going to bite my own arm. At last I saw the basin in whichwas the blood had bled at my nose the day before; I ran to it, andswallowed it with such haste, and such a greedy appetite, as if I hadwondered nobody had taken it before, and afraid it should be takenfrom me now.
"Though after it was down the thoughts of it filled me with horror, yetit checked the fit of hunger, and I drank a draught of fair water, andwas composed and refreshed for some hours, after it. This was the fourthday; and thus I held it till towards night, when, within the compass ofthree hours, I had all these several circumstances over again, one afteranother, viz. sick, sleepy, eagerly hungry, pain in the stomach, thenravenous again, then sick again, then lunatic, then crying, thenravenous again, and so every quarter of an hour; and my strength wastedexceedingly. At night I laid me down, having no comfort but in the hopethat I should die before morning.
"All this night I had no sleep, but the hunger was now turned into adisease, and I had a terrible colic and griping, wind instead of foodhaving found its way into my bowels; and in this condition I lay tillmorning, when I was surprised a little with the cries and lamentationsof my young master, who called out to me that his mother was dead. Ilifted myself up a little, for I had not strength to rise, but found shewas 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 ofappetite that nothing but the tortures of death can imitate; and thiscondition I was in when I heard the seamen above cry out 'A sail! asail!' 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; andmy master was so sick that I thought he had been expiring; so we couldnot open the cabin-door, or get any account what it was that occasionedsuch a combustion; nor had we any conversation with the ship's companyfor two days, they having told us they had not a mouthful of any thingto eat in the ship; and they told us afterwards they thought we hadbeen dead.
"It was this dreadful condition we were in when you were sent to saveour lives; and how you found us, Sir, you know as well as I, andbetter too."
This was her own relation, and is such a distinct account of starving todeath as I confess I never met with, and was exceeding entertaining tome: I am the rather apt to believe it to be a true account, because theyouth gave me an account of a good part of it; though I must own not sodistinct and so feelingly as his maid, and the rather because it seemshis mother fed him at the price of her own life: but the poor maid,though her constitution being stronger than that of her mistress, whowas 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 somethingsooner than her mistress, who might be allowed to keep the last bitssomething longer than she parted with any to relieve the maid. Noquestion, as the case is here related, if our ship, or some other, hadnot so providentially met them, a few days more would have ended alltheir lives, unless they had prevented it by eating one another; andeven that, as their case stood, would have served them but a littlewhile, they being five hundred leagues from any land, or any possibilityof relief, other than in the miraculous manner it happened.--But this isby 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 notthink fit to let them know any thing of the sloop I had framed, andwhich I thought of setting up among them; for I found, at least at myfirst 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 verylight disgust, have separated, and gone away from one another; orperhaps have turned pirates, and so made the island a den of thieves,instead of a plantation of sober and religious people, as I intended itto be; nor did I leave the two pieces of brass cannon that I had onboard, or the two quarter-deck guns, that my nephew took extraordinary,for the same reason: I thought they had enough to qualify them for adefensive war, against any that should invade them; but I was not to setthem up for an offensive war, or to encourage them to go abroad toattack others, which, in the end, would only bring ruin and destructionupon themselves and all their undertakings: I reserved the sloop,therefore, and the guns, for their service another way, as I shallobserve 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 thefifth day of May, having been five and twenty days among them; and, asthey were all resolved to stay upon the island till I came to removethem, I promised to send some further relief from the Brasils, if Icould possibly find an opportunity; and particularly I promised to sendthem some cattle; such as sheep, hogs, and cows; for as to the two cowsand calves which I brought from England, we had been obliged, by thelength 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 abouttwenty-two days; meeting nothing remarkable in our pas
sage but this,that about three days after we sailed, being becalmed, and the currentsetting strong to the N.N.E. running, as it were, into a bay or gulf onthe land side, we were driven something out of our course; and once ortwice our men cried Land, to the westward; but whether it was thecontinent, 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 somethingvery black, not being able to discover what it was; but, after sometime, our chief mate going up the main shrouds a little way, and lookingat them with a perspective, cried out, it was an army. I could notimagine what he meant by an army, and spoke a little hastily, callingthe fellow a fool, or some such word: "Nay, Sir," says he, "don't beangry, for it is an army, and a fleet too; for I believe there are athousand canoes, and you may see them paddle along, and they are comingtowards us too