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The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808)
This confusion of my thoughts kept me waking all night; but in the morning I fell asleep, and having by the amusement of my mind been, as it were, tired, and my spirits exhausted, I slept very soundly, and I awaked much better composed than I had ever been before. And now I began to think sedately; and, upon the utmost debate with myself, I concluded, that this island, which was so exceeding pleasant, fruitful, and no farther from the main land than as I had seen, was not so entirely abandoned as I might imagine: that although there were no stated inhabitants who lived on the spot; yet that there might sometimes come boats off from the shore, who either with design, or perhaps never but when they were driven by cross winds, might come to this place.
That I had lived here fifteen years now, and had not met with the least-shadow or figure of any people before; and that if at any time they should be driven here, it was probable they went away again as soon as ever they could, seeing they had never thought fit to fix there upon any occasion, to this time.
That the most I could suggest any danger from, was, from any such casual accidental landing of straggling people from the main, who, as it was likely, if they were driven hither, were here against their wills; so they made no stay here, but went off again with all possible speed, seldom staying one night on shore, lest they should not have the help of the tides and daylight back again; and that therefore I had nothing to do but to consider of some safe retreat, in case I should see any savages land upon the spot.
Now I began sorely to repent that I had dug my cave so large, as to bring a door through again, which door, as I said, came out beyond where my fortification joined to the rock. Upon maturely considering this, therefore, I resolved to draw me a second fortification, in the manner of a semicircle, at a distance from my wall, just where I had planted a double row of trees about twelve years before, of which I made mention: these trees having been planted so thick before, there wanted but a few piles to be driven between them, that they should be thicker and stronger, and my wall would be soon finished.
So that I had now a double wall, and my outer wall was thickened with pieces of timber, old cables, and every thing I could think of to make it strong; having in it seven little holes, about as big as I might put my arm out at. In the inside of this I thickened my wall to about ten feet thick, continually bringing earth out of my cave, and laying it at the foot of the wall, and walking upon it; and through the seven holes I contrived to plant the muskets, of which I took notice that I got seven on shore out of the ship; these, I say, I planted like my cannon, and fitted them into frames that held them like a carriage, that so I could fire all the seven guns in two minutes time. This wall I was many a weary month in finishing, and yet never thought myself safe till it was done.
When this was done, I stuck all the ground without my wall, for a great way every way, as full with stakes or sticks of the osier-like wood, which I found so apt to grow, as they could well stand; insomuch that I believe I might set in near twenty thousand of them, leaving a pretty large space between them and my wall, that I might have room to see an enemy, and they might have no shelter from the young trees, if they attempted to approach my outer wall.
Thus in two years time I had a thick grove; and in five or six years time I had a wood before my dwelling, grown so monstrous thick and strong, that it was indeed perfectly impassable; and no man of what kind soever would ever imagine that there was any thing beyond it, much less an habitation: as for the way I proposed myself to go in and out (for I left no avenue), it was by setting two ladders; one to a part of the rock which was low, and then broke in, and left room to place another ladder upon that; so when the two ladders were taken down, no man living could come down to me without mischiefing himself; and if they had come down, they were still on the outside of my outer wall.
Thus I took all the measures human prudence could suggest for my own preservation; and it will be seen at length, that they were not altogether without just reason; though I foresaw nothing at that time more than my mere fear suggested.
While this was doing, I was not altogether careless of my other affairs; for I had a great concern upon me for my little herd of goats; they were not only a present supply to me upon every occasion, and began to be sufficient for me, without the expense of powder and shot, but also abated the fatigue of my hunting after the wild ones; and I was loath to lose the advantage of them, and to have them all to nurse up over again.
To this purpose, after long consideration, I could think but of two ways to preserve them: one was to find another convenient place to dig a cave under ground, and to drive them into it every night; and the other was to enclose two or three little bits of land, remote from one another, and as much concealed as I could, where I might keep about half a dozen young goats in each place; so that if any disaster happened to the flock in general, I might be able to raise them again with little trouble and time: and this, though it would require a great deal of time and labour, I thought was the most rational design.
Accordingly I spent some time, to find out the most retired parts of the island; and I pitched upon one, which was as private indeed as my heart could wish; for it was a little damp piece of ground in the middle of the hollow and thick woods, where, as is observed, I almost lost myself once before, endeavouring to come back that way from the eastern part of the island: here I found a clear piece of land near three acres, so surrounded with woods, that it was almost an enclosure by nature; at least it did not want near so much labour to make it so, as the other pieces of ground I had worked so hard at.
I immediately went to work with this piece of ground, and in less than a month's time I had so fenced it round, that my flock or herd, call it which you please, which were not so wild now as at first they might be supposed to be, were well enough secured in it. So without any farther delay, I removed ten she-goats and two he-goats to this piece; and when there, I continued to perfect the fence, till I had made it as secure as the other, which, however, I did at more leisure, and it took me up more time by a great deal.
All this labour I was at the expense of, purely from my apprehensions on the account of the print of a man's foot which I had seen; for as yet, I never saw any human creature come near the island, and I had now lived two years under these uneasinesses, which indeed made my life much less comfortable than it was before; as may well be imagined, by any who know what it is to live in the constant snare of the fear of man; and this I must observe with grief too, that the discomposure of my mind had too great impressions also upon the religious part of my thoughts; for the dread and terror of falling into the hands of savages and cannibals lay so upon my spirits, that I seldom found myself in a due temper for application to my Maker; at least, not with the sedate calmness and resignation of soul which I was wont to do. I rather prayed to God as under great affliction and pressure of mind, surrounded with danger, and in expectation every night of being murdered and devoured before the morning; and I must testify from my experience, that a temper of peace, thankfulness, love, and affection, is much more the proper frame for prayer than that of terror and discomposure; and that under the dread of mischief impending, a man is no more fit for a comforting performance of the duty of praying to God, than he is for repentance on a sick bed; for these discomposures affect the mind as the others do the body; and the discomposure of the mind must necessarily be as great a disability as that of the body, and much greater; praying to God being properly an act of the mind, not of the body.
But to go on: after I had thus secured one part of my little living stock, I went about the whole island, searching for another private place, to make such another deposit; when wandering more to the west point of the island than I had ever done yet, and looking out to sea, I thought I saw a boat upon the sea at a great distance; I had found a perspective glass or two in one of the seamen's chests, which I saved out of our ship; but I had it not about me, and this was so remote, that I could not tell what to make of it, though I looked at it till my eyes were not able to look any longer: whether it was a boat, or not, I do not know; but as I descended from the hill, I could see no more of it, so I gave it over; only I resolved to go no more without a perspective glass in my pocket.
When I was come down the hill, to the end of the island, where indeed I had never been before, I was presently convinced, that the seeing the print of a man's foot, was not such a strange thing in the island as I imagined; and, but that it was a special providence that I was cast upon the side of the island where the savages never came, I should easily have known, that nothing was more frequent than for the canoes from the main, when, they happened to be a little too far out at sea, to shoot over to that side of the island for harbour; likewise, as they often met, and fought in their canoes, the victors, having taken any prisoners, would bring them over to this shore, where, according to their dreadful customs, being all cannibals, they would kill and eat them: of which hereafter.
When I was come down the hill to the shore, as I said above, being the S.W. point of the island, I was perfectly confounded and amazed; nor is it possible for me to express the horror of my mind, at seeing the shore spread with skulls, hands, feet, and other bones of human bodies; and particularly I observed a place where there had been a fire made, and a circle dug in the earth, like a cock-pit, where it is supposed the savage wretches had sat down to their inhuman feastings upon the bodies of their fellow-creatures.
I was so astonished with the sight of these things, that I entertained no notions of any danger to myself from it, for a long while; all my apprehensions were buried in the thoughts of such a pitch of inhuman, hellish brutality, and the horror of the degeneracy of human nature; which, though I had heard of often, yet I never had so near a view of before: in short, I turned away my face from the horrid spectacle; my stomach grew sick, and I was just at the point of fainting, when nature discharged the disorder from my stomach, and, having vomited with an uncommon violence, I was a little relieved, but could not bear to stay in the place a moment; so I got me up the hill again with all the speed I could, and walked on towards my own habitation.
When I came a little out of that part of the island, I stood still a while as amazed; and then recovering myself, I looked up with the utmost affection of my soul, and, with a flood of tears in my eyes, gave God thanks, that had cast my first lot in a part of the world where I was distinguished from such dreadful creatures as these; and that though I had esteemed my present condition very miserable, had yet given me so many comforts in it, that I had still more to give thanks for than to complain of; and this above all, that I had, even in this miserable condition, been comforted with the knowledge of himself, and the hope of his blessing, which was a felicity more than sufficiently equivalent to all the misery which I had suffered, or could suffer.
In this frame of thankfulness I went home to my castle, and began to be much easier now, as to the safety of my circumstances, than ever I was before; for I observed, that these wretches never came to this island in search of what they could get; perhaps not seeking, not wanting, or not expecting, any thing here, and having often, no doubt, been up in the covered woody part of it, without finding any thing to their purpose. I knew I had been here now almost eighteen years, and never saw the least footsteps of a human creature there before; and might be here eighteen more as entirely concealed as I was now, if I did not discover myself to them, which I had no manner of occasion to do, it being my only business to keep myself entirely concealed where I was, unless I found a better sort of creatures than cannibals to make myself known to.
Yet I entertained such an abhorrence of the savage wretches that I have been speaking of, and of the wretched inhuman custom of their devouring and eating one another up, that I continued pensive and sad, and kept close within my own circle for almost two years after this: when I say my own circle, I mean by it my three plantations, viz. my castle, my country-seat, which I called my bower, and my enclosure in the woods; nor did I look after this for any other use than as an enclosure for my goats; for the aversion which nature gave me to these hellish wretches was such, that I was as fearful of seeing them as of seeing, the devil himself; nor did I so much as go to look after my boat in all this time, but began rather to think of making me another; for I could not think of ever making any more attempts to bring the other boat round the island to me, lest I should meet with some of those creatures at sea, in which, if I had happened to have fallen into their hands, I knew what would have been my lot.
Time, however, and the satisfaction I had, that I was in no danger of being discovered by these people, began to wear off my uneasiness about them; and I began to live just in the same composed manner as before; only with this difference, that I used more caution, and kept my eyes more about me than I did before, lest I should happen to be seen by any of them; and particularly, I was more cautious of firing my gun, lest any of them on the island should happen to hear it; and it was therefore a very good providence to me, that I had furnished myself with a tame breed of goats, that I had no need to hunt any more about the woods, or shoot at them; and if I did catch any more of them after this, it was by traps and snares, as I had done before; so that for two years after this, I believe I never fired my gun once off, though I never went out without it; and, which was more, as I had saved three pistols out of the ship, I always carried them out with me, or at least two of them, sticking them in my goat-skin belt: I likewise furbished up one of the great cutlasses that I had out of the ship, and made me a belt to put it in also; so that I was now a most formidable fellow to look at when I went abroad, if you add to the former description of myself, the particular of two pistols, and a great broad-sword, hanging at my side in a belt, but without a scabbard.
Things going on thus, as I have said, for some time, I seemed, excepting these cautions, to be reduced to my former calm sedate way of living. All these things tended to shew me more and more how far my condition was from being miserable, compared to some others; nay, to many other particulars of life, which it might have pleased God to have made my lot. It put me upon reflecting, how little repining there would be among mankind, at any condition of life, if people would rather compare their condition with those that are worse, in order to be thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their murmurings and complainings.
As in my present condition there were not really many things which I wanted, so indeed I thought that the frights I had been in about these savage wretches, and the concern I had been in for my own preservation, had taken off the edge of my invention for my own conveniences, and I had dropped a good design, which I had once bent my thoughts upon; and that was, to try if I could not make some of my barley into malt, and then try to brew myself some beer: this was really a whimsical thought, and I reproved myself often for the simplicity of it; for I presently saw there would be the want of several things necessary to the making my beer, that it would be impossible for me to supply; as, first, casks to preserve it in, which was a thing that, as I have observed already, I could never compass; no, though I spent not many days, but weeks, nay months, in attempting it, but to no purpose. In the next place, I had no hops to make it keep, no yeast to make it work, no copper or kettle to make it boil; and yet, had not all these things intervened, I mean the frights and terrors I was in about the savages, I had undertaken it, and perhaps brought it to pass too; for I seldom gave any thing over without accomplishing it, when I once had it in my head enough to begin it.
But my invention now ran quite another way; for night and day I could think of nothing, but how I might destroy some of these monsters in their cruel bloody entertainment, and, if possible, save the victim they should bring hither to destroy. It would take up a larger volume than this whole work is intended to be, to set down all the contrivances I hatched, or rather brooded upon in my thoughts, for the destroying these creatures, or at least frightening them, so as to prevent their coming hither any more; but all was abortive; nothing could be possible to take effect, unless I was to be there to do it myself; and what could one man do among them, when perhaps there might be twenty or thirty of them together, with their darts, or their bows and arrows, with which they could shoot as true to a mark as I could with my gun?
Sometimes I contrived to dig a hole under the place where they made their fire, and put in five or six pounds of gunpowder, which, when they kindled their fire, would consequently take fire, and blow up all that was near it; but, as in the first place I should be very loath to waste so much powder upon them, my store being now within the quantity of a barrel, so neither could I be sure of its going off at any certain time, when it might surprise them; and, at best, that it would do little more than just blow the fire about their ears, and fright them, but not sufficient to make them forsake the place; so I laid it aside, and then proposed, that I would place myself in ambush in some convenient place, with my three guns all double-loaded, and in the middle of their bloody ceremony let fly at them, when I should be sure to kill or wound perhaps two or three at every shoot; and then falling in upon them with my three pistols, and my sword, I made no doubt but that, if there were twenty, I should kill them all: this fancy pleased my thoughts for some weeks, and I was so full of it that I often dreamed of it; and sometimes, that I was just going to let fly at them in my sleep.
I went so far with it in my indignation, that I employed myself several days to find out proper places to put myself in ambuscade, as I said, to watch for them; and I went frequently to the place itself, which was now grown more familiar to me; and especially while my mind was thus filled with thoughts of revenge, and of a bloody putting twenty or thirty of them to the sword, as I may call it; but the horror I had at the place, and at the signals of the barbarous wretches devouring one another, abated my malice.
Well, at length I found a place in the side of the hill, where I was satisfied I might securely wait till I saw any of the boats coming, and might then, even before they would be ready to come on shore, convey myself unseen into thickets of trees, in one of which there was an hollow large enough to conceal me entirely; and where I might sit, and observe all their bloody doings, and take my full aim at their heads, when they were so close together, as that it would be next to impossible that I should miss my shoot, or that I could fail wounding three or four of them at the first shoot.
In this place then I resolved to fix my design; and accordingly I prepared two muskets and my ordinary fowling-piece. The two muskets I loaded with a brace of slugs each, and four or five smaller bullets, about the size of pistol-bullets, and the fowling-piece I loaded with near an handful of swan-shot, of the largest size; I also loaded my pistols with about four bullets each: and in this posture, well provided with ammunition for a second and third charge, I prepared myself for my expedition.
After I had thus laid the scheme for my design, and in my imagination put it in practice, I continually made my tour every morning up to the top of the hill, which was from my castle, as I called it, about three miles or more, to see if I could observe any boats upon the sea, coming near the island, or standing over towards it; but I began to tire of this hard duty, after I had for two or three months constantly kept my watch; but came always back without any discovery, there having not in all that time been the least appearance, not only on or near the shore, but not on the whole ocean, so far as my eyes or glasses could reach every way.
As long as I kept up my daily tour to the hill to look out, so long also I kept up the vigour of my design, and my spirits seemed to be all the while in a suitable frame for so outrageous an execution, as the killing twenty or thirty naked savages for an offence, which I had not at all entered into a discussion of in my thoughts, any further than my passions were at first fired by the horror I conceived at the unnatural custom of the people of that country, who, it seems, had been suffered by Providence, in his wise disposition of the world, to have no other guide than that of their own abominable and vitiated passions; and consequently were left, and perhaps had been for some ages, to act such horrid things, and receive such dreadful customs, as nothing but nature, entirely abandoned of Heaven, and actuated by some hellish degeneracy, could have run them into; but now, when, as I have said, I began to be weary of the fruitless excursion which I had made so long, and so far, every morning in vain; so my opinion of the action itself began to alter, and I began, with cooler and calmer thoughts, to consider what it was I was going to engage in; what authority or call I had to pretend to be judge and executioner upon these men as criminals, whom Heaven had thought fit for so many ages to suffer, unpunished, to go on, and to be, as it were, the executioners of his judgments upon one another; also, how far these people were offenders against me, and what right I had to engage in the quarrel of that blood, which they shed promiscuously one upon another. I debated this very often with myself thus: How do I know what God himself judges in this particular case? It is certain these people do not commit this as a crime; it is not against their own consciences reproving, or their light reproaching them. They do not know it to be an offence, and then commit it in defiance of divine justice, as we do in almost all the sins we commit. They think it no more a crime to kill a captive taken in war, than we do to kill an ox; nor to eat human flesh, than we do to eat mutton.
When I had considered this a little, it followed necessarily, that I was certainly in the wrong in it; that these people were not murderers in the sense that I had before condemned them in my thoughts, any more than those Christians were murderers, who often put to death the prisoners taken in battle; or more frequently, upon many occasions, put whole troops of men to the sword, without giving quarter, though they threw down their arms and submitted.
In the next place, it occurred to me, that albeit the usage they gave one another was thus brutish and inhuman, yet it was really nothing to me: these people had done me no injury: that if they attempted me, or I saw it necessary for my immediate preservation to fall upon them, something might be said for it; but that I was yet out of their power, and they had really no knowledge of me, and consequently no design upon me; and therefore it could not be just for me to fall upon them: that this would justify the conduct of the Spaniards, in all their barbarities practised in America, where they destroyed millions of these people, who, however they were idolaters and barbarians, and had several bloody and barbarous rites in these customs, such as sacrificing human bodies to their idols, were yet, as to the Spaniards, very innocent people; and that the rooting them out of the country is spoken of with the utmost abhorrence and detestation, even by the Spaniards themselves, at this time, and by all other Christian nations of Europe, as a mere butchery, a bloody and unnatural piece of cruelty, unjustifiable either to God or man; and such, as for which the very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible to all people of humanity, or of Christian compassion: as if the kingdom of Spain were particularly eminent for the product of a race of men, who were without principles of tenderness, or the common bowels of pity to the miserable, which is reckoned to be a mark of a generous temper in the mind.
These considerations really put me to a pause, and to a kind of a full stop; and I began by little and little to be off of my design, and to conclude I had taken a wrong measure in my resolutions to attack the savages; that it was not my business to meddle with them, unless they first attacked me, and this it was my business, if possible, to prevent; but that, if I were discovered and attacked, then I knew my duty.
On the other hand, I argued with myself that this really was the way not to deliver myself, but entirely to ruin and destroy myself; for unless I was sure to kill every one that not only should be on shore at that time, but that should ever come on shore afterwards, if but one of them escaped to tell their country-people what had happened, they would come over again by thousands to revenge the death of their fellows; and I should only bring upon myself a certain destruction, which at present I had no manner of occasion for.
Upon the whole, I concluded, that neither in principles nor in policy, I ought one way or other to concern myself in this affair: that my business was, by all possible means to conceal myself from them, and not to leave the least signal to them to guess by, that there were any living creatures upon the island, I mean of human shape.
Religion joined in with this prudential, and I was convinced now many ways that I was perfectly out of my duty, when I was laying all my bloody schemes for the destruction of innocent creatures, I mean innocent as to me; as to the crimes they were guilty of towards one another, I had nothing to do with them; they were national punishments to make a just retribution for national offences; and to bring public judgments upon those who offend in a public manner, by such ways as best please God.
This appeared so clear to me now, that nothing was a greater satisfaction to me, than that I had not been suffered to do a thing which I now saw so much reason to believe would have been no less a sin than that of wilful murder, if I had committed it; and I gave most humble thanks on my knees to God, that had thus delivered me from blood-guiltiness; beseeching him to grant me the protection of his Providence, that I might not fall into the hands of barbarians; or that I might not lay my hands upon them, unless I had a more clear call from Heaven to do it, in defence of my own life.
In this disposition I continued for near a year after this: and so far was I from desiring an occasion for falling upon these wretches, that in all that time I never once went up the hill to see whether there were any of them in sight, or to know whether any of them had been on shore there, or not; that I might not be tempted to renew any of my contrivances against them, or be provoked, by any advantage which might present itself, to fall upon them; only this I did, I went and removed my boat, which I had on the other side of the island, and carried it down to the east end of the whole island, where I ran it into a little cove which I found under some high rocks, and where I knew, by reason of the currents, the savages durst not, at least would not, come with their boats upon any account whatsoever.
With my boat I carried away every thing that I had left there belonging to her, though not necessary for the bare going thither; viz. a mast and sail, which I had made for her, and a thing like an anchor, but indeed which could not be called either anchor or grappling; however, it was the best I could make of its kind. All these I removed, that there might not be the least shadow of any discovery, or any appearance of any boat, or of any habitation upon the island.
Besides this, I kept myself, as I said, more retired than ever, and seldom went from my cell, other than upon my constant employment, viz. to milk my she-goats, and manage my little flock in the wood, which, as it was quite on the other part of the island, was quite out of danger: for certain it is, that these savage people, who sometimes haunted this island, never came with any thoughts of finding any thing here, and consequently never wandered off from the coast; and I doubt not but they might have been several times on shore, after my apprehensions of them had made me cautious, as well as before; and indeed I looked back with some horror upon the thoughts of what my condition would have been, if I had chopped upon them, and been discovered before that, when naked and unarmed, except with one gun, and that loaded often only with small shot. I walked every where, peeping and peering about the island, to see what I could get: what a surprise should I have been in, if, when I discovered the print of a man's foot, I had instead of that seen fifteen or twenty savages, and found them pursuing me, and, by the swiftness of their running, no possibility of my escaping them!
