by Daniel Defoe
Iwould unjustly slander my self, if I should say I was not sincerelythankful to my great Preserver, to whose singular protection Iacknowledged, with great humility, that all these unknown deliveranceswere due; and without which, I must inevitably have fallen into theirmerciless hands.
When these thoughts were over, my head was for some time taken up inconsidering the nature of these wretched creatures; I mean, the savages;and how it came to pass in the world, that the wise governour of allthings should give up any of his creatures to such inhumanity; nay, tosomething so much below, even brutality it self, as to devour its ownkind; but as this ended in some (at that time fruitless) speculations,it occurred to me to enquire, what part of the world these wretcheslived in; how far off the coast was from whence they came; what theyventured over so far from home for; what kind of boats they had; and whyI might not order my self, and my business so, that I might be as ableto go over thither, as they were to come to me.
I never so much as troubled my self to consider what I should do with myself, when I came thither; what would become of me, if I fell into thehands of the savages; or how I should escape from them, if theyattempted me; no, nor so much as how it was possible for me to reach thecoast, and not be attempted by some or other of them, without anypossibility of delivering my self; and if I should not fall into theirhands, what I should do for provision, or whither I should bend mycourse; none of these thoughts, I say, so much as came in my way; but mymind was wholly bent upon the notion of my passing over in my boat, tothe main land: I looked back upon my present condition as the mostmiserable that could possibly be; that I was not able to throw myselfinto any thing but death that could be called worse; that if I reachedthe shore of the main, I might, perhaps, meet with relief; or I mightcoast along, as I did on the shore of Africa, till I came to someinhabited country, and where I might find some relief; and after all,perhaps, I might fall in with some Christian ship that might take me in:and if the worst came to the worst, I could but die, which would put anend to all these miseries at once. Pray, note all this was the fruit ofa disturbed mind, an impatient temper, made, as it were, desperate bythe long continuance of my troubles, and the disappointments I had metin the wreck I had been on board of, and where I had been so near theobtaining of what I so earnestly longed for, viz. somebody to speak to,and to learn some knowledge from of the place where I was, and of theprobable means of my deliverance; I say, I was agitated wholly by thesethoughts. All my calm of mind in my resignation to Providence, andwaiting the issue of the dispositions of Heaven, seemed to be suspended;and I had, as it were, no power to turn my thoughts to any thing but theproject of a voyage to the main; which came upon me with such force, andsuch an impetuosity of 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 ashigh as if I had been in a fever, merely with the extraordinary fervourof my mind about it; nature, as if I had been fatigued and exhaustedwith the very thought of it, threw me into a sound sleep: one would havethought I should have dreamed of it; but I did not, nor of any thingrelating to it; but I dreamed, that as I was going out in the morning,as usual, from my castle, I saw upon the shore two canoes and elevensavages coming to land, and that they brought with them another savage,whom they 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:then 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, shewedmyself to him, and, smiling upon him, encouraged him: that he kneeleddown to me, seeming to pray me to assist him; upon which I shewed myladder, made him go up it, and carried him into my cave, and he becamemy servant; and that as soon as I had got this man, I said to myself,"Now I may certainly venture to the main land; for this fellow willserve me as 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 escape." 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 it was no more than a dream, were equallyextravagant the other way, and threw me into a very great dejectionof spirit.
Upon this, however, I made this conclusion, that my only way to go aboutan attempt for an escape, was, if possible, to get a savage in 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,and killing them all; and this was not only a very desperate attempt,and might miscarry; but, on the other hand, I had greatly scrupled thelawfulness of it to me, 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 a great while.
However, at last, after many secret disputes with myself, and aftergreat perplexities about it, (for all these arguments, one way andanother, struggled in my head a long time,) the eager prevailing desireof deliverance at length mastered all the rest, and I resolved, ifpossible, to get one of these savages into my hands, cost what it would:the next thing then was to contrive how to do it; and this indeed wasvery difficult to resolve on: but as I could pitch upon no probablemeans for it, so I resolved to put myself upon the watch to see themwhen they came on shore, and leave the rest to the event, taking suchmeasures as the opportunity should present, let it be what it would.
With these resolutions in my thoughts, I set myself upon the scout asoften as possible, and indeed so often, till I was heartily tired of it;for it was above a year and a half that I waited, and for a great partof that time went out to the west end, and to the south-west corner ofthe island, almost every day, to see the canoes, but none appeared. Thiswas very discouraging, and began to trouble me much; though I can't saythat it did in this case, as it had done some time before that, viz.wear off the edge of my desire to the thing; but the longer it seemed tobe delayed, the more eager I was for it: in a word, I was not at firstmore careful to shun the sight of these savages, and avoid being seen bythem, than I was now 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 entirely slaves to me, to do whateverI should direct them, and to prevent their being able, at any time, todo me any hurt. It was a great while that I pleased myself with thisaffair, but nothing still presented; all my fancies and schemes came tonothing, for no savages came near me for a great while.
About a year and a half after I had entertained these notions, and, bylong musing, had, as it were, resolved them all into nothing, for wantof an occasion to put them in 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 I lay stillin my 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 mad
e 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 my perspectiveglass, that they were no less than thirty in number; that they had afire kindled, and that they had had meat dressed; how they cooked it,that I knew not, or what it was; but they were all dancing in I know nothow many barbarous gestures and figures, their own way, round the fire.
When 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