by Daniel Defoe
had so many things to be thankful for, and you hadnever heard of the Second Part of the Travels and Adventures of RobinsonCrusoe; so I must leave here the fruitless exclaiming at myself, and goon with my voyage.
From the Brasils we made directly away over the Atlantic sea to the Capede Bonne Esperance, or, as we call it, the Cape of Good Hope; and had atolerable good voyage, our course generally south-east; now and then astorm, and some contrary winds. But my disasters at sea were at an end;my future rubs and cross events were to befal me on shore; that it mightappear the land was as well prepared to be our scourge as the sea, whenHeaven, who directs the circumstances of things, pleases to appointit to be so.
Our ship was on a trading voyage, and had a supercargo on board, who wasto direct all her motions after she arrived at the Cape; only beinglimited to a certain number of days for stay, by charter-party, at theseveral ports she was to go to. This was none of my business, neitherdid I meddle with it at all; my nephew the captain, and the supercargo,adjusting all those things between them as they thought fit.
We made no stay at the Cape longer than was needful to take in freshwater, but made the best of our way for the coast of Coromandel; we wereindeed informed that a French man of war of fifty guns and two largemerchant-ships were gone for the Indies; and as I knew we were at warwith France, I had some apprehensions of them; but they went their ownway, and we heard no more of them.
I shall not pester my account, or the reader, with descriptions ofplaces, journals of our voyages, variations of the compass, latitudes,meridian distances, trade-winds, situation of ports, and the like; suchas almost all the histories of long navigation are full of, and whichmake the reading tiresome enough, and are perfectly unprofitable to allthat read, except only to those who are to go to those placesthemselves.
It is enough to name the ports and places which we touched at, and whatoccurred to us upon our passing from one to another. We touched first atthe island of Madagascar, where, though the people are fierce andtreacherous, and, in particular, very well armed with lances and bows,which they use with inconceivable dexterity, yet we fared very well withthem awhile; they treated us very civilly; and for some trifles which wegave them, such as knives, scissors, &c. they brought us eleven good fatbullocks, middling in size, but very good in flesh, which we took in,partly for fresh provisions for our present spending, and the rest tosalt for the ship's use.
We were obliged to stay here for some time after we had furnishedourselves with provisions; and I that was always too curious to lookinto every nook of the world wherever I came, was for going on shore asoften as I could. It was on the east side of the island that we went onshore one evening, and the people, who by the way are very numerous,came thronging about us, and stood gazing at us at a distance; as we hadtraded freely with them, and had been kindly used, we thought ourselvesin no danger; but when we saw the people we cut three boughs out of atree, and stuck them up at a distance from us, which, it seems, is amark in the country not only of truce and friendship, but when it isaccepted, the other side set up three poles or boughs also, which is asignal that they accept the truce too; but then this is a knowncondition of the truce, that you are not to pass beyond their threepoles towards them, nor they come past your three poles or boughstowards you; so that you are perfectly secure within the three poles,and all the space between your poles and theirs is allowed like a marketfor free converse, traffic, and commerce. When you go thither you mustnot carry your weapons with you; and if they come into that space theystick up their javelins and lances all at the first poles, and come onunarmed; but if any violence is offered them, and the truce therebybroken, away they run to the poles and lay hold of their weapons, andthen the truce is at an end.
It happened one evening when we went on shore, that a greater number oftheir people came down than usual, but all was very friendly and civil.They brought with them several kinds of provisions, for which wesatisfied them with such toys as we had; their women also brought usmilk and roots, and several things very acceptable to us, and all wasquiet; and we made us a little tent or hut, of some boughs of trees, andlay on shore all that night.
I know not what was the occasion, but I was not so well satisfied to lieon shore as the rest; and the boat lying at an anchor about a stone'scast from the land, with two men in her to take care of her, I made oneof them come on shore, and getting some boughs of trees to cover us alsoin the boat, I spread the sail on the bottom of the boat, and lay onboard, under the cover of the branches of the trees, all night.
About two o'clock in the morning we heard one of our men make a terriblenoise on the shore, calling out for God's sake to bring the boat in, andcome and help them, for they were all like to be murdered; at the sametime I heard the firing of five muskets, which was the number of theguns they had, and that three times over; for, it seems, the nativeshere were not so easily frighted with guns as the savages were inAmerica, where I had to do with them.
All this while I knew not what was the matter; but rousing immediatelyfrom sleep with the noise, I caused the boat to be thrust in, andresolved, with three fusils we had on board, to land and assist our men.
We got the boat soon to the shore; but our men were in too much haste;for being come to the shore, they plunged into the water to get to theboat with all the expedition they could, being pursued by between threeand four hundred men. Our men were but nine in all, and only five ofthem had fusils with them; the rest, indeed, had pistols and swords, butthey were of small use to them.
We took up seven of our men, and with difficulty enough too, three ofthem being very ill wounded; and that which was still worse was, thatwhile we stood in the boat to take our men in, we were in as much dangeras they were in on shore; for they poured their arrows in upon us sothick, that we were fain to barricade the side of the boat up with thebenches and two or three loose boards, which to our great satisfactionwe had by mere accident, or providence rather, in the boat.
And yet had it been daylight, they are, it seems, such exact marksmen,that if they could have seen but the least part of any of us, they wouldhave been sure of us. We had, by the light of the moon, a little sightof them as they stood pelting us from the shore with darts and arrows,and having got ready our fire-arms, we gave them a volley, and we couldhear by the cries of some of them, that we had wounded several; however,they stood thus in battle array on the shore till break of day, which wesuppose was that they might see the better to take their aim at us.
In this condition we lay, and could not tell how to weigh our anchor, orset up our sail, because we must needs stand up in the boat, and theywere as sure to hit us as we were to hit a bird in a tree with smallshot. We made signals of distress to the ship, which though she rode aleague off, yet my nephew, the captain, hearing our firing, and byglasses perceiving the posture we lay in, and that we fired towards theshore, pretty well understood us; and weighing anchor with all speed, hestood as near the shore as he durst with the ship, and then sent anotherboat with ten hands in her to assist us; but we called to them not tocome too near, telling them what condition we were in; however, theystood in nearer to us; and one of the men taking the end of a tow-linein his hand, and keeping our boat between him and the enemy, so thatthey could not perfectly see him, swam on board us, and made the linefast to the boat, upon which we slipt our little cable, and leaving ouranchor behind, they towed us out of the reach of the arrows, we all thewhile lying close behind the barricade we had made.
As soon as we were got from between the ship and the shore, that shecould lay her side to the shore, we ran along just by them, and wepoured in a broadside among them, loaded with pieces of iron and lead,small bullets, and such stuff, besides the great shot, which made aterrible havoc among them.
When we were got on board and out of danger, we had time to examine intothe occasion of this fray; and indeed our supercargo, who had been oftenin those parts, put me upon it; for he said he was sure the inhabitantswould not have touched us after we had made a truce, if we had not donesomethi
ng to provoke them to it. At length it came out, viz. that an oldwoman, who had come to sell us some milk, had brought it within ourpoles, with a young woman with her, who also brought some roots orherbs; and while the old woman (whether she was mother to the youngwoman or no they could not tell) was selling us the milk, one of our menoffered some rudeness to the wench that was with her, at which the oldwoman made a great noise. However, the seaman would not quit his prize,but carried her out of the old woman's sight, among the trees, it beingalmost dark. The old woman went away without her, and, as we suppose,made an outcry among the people she came from; who, upon notice, raisedthis great army upon us in three or four hours; and it was great oddsbut we had been all destroyed.
One of our men was killed with a lance that was thrown at him, just atthe beginning of the attack, as he sallied out of the tent we had made;the rest came off free, all but the fellow who was the occasion of allthe mischief, who paid dear enough for his black mistress,