The Eerie Adventures of the Lycanthrope Robinson Crusoe (5 page)

I made forward for about three days more, without offering to go near the shore, till I saw the land run out a great length into the sea, at about the distance of four or five leagues before me. The sea being very calm, I kept a large offing, to make this point. At length, doubling the point, at about two leagues from the land, I saw plainly land on the other side to seaward. I concluded, as it was most certain indeed, this was the Cape de Verd and those the islands called, from thence, Cape de Verd Islands. However, they were at a great distance and I could not well tell what I had best to do, for if I should be taken with a gale of wind I might neither reach one nor the other.

In this dilemma, as I was very pensive, I stepped into the cabin and sat me down, Xury having the helm. On a sudden, the boy cried out, "Master, master, a ship with a sail!" The foolish boy was frightened out of his wits, thinking it must be some of his master's ships sent to pursue us, when I knew we were gotten far enough out of their reach. I jumped out of the cabin and saw it was a Portuguese ship, and was bound to the coast of Guinea for Negroes. But when I observ’d the course she steered, I was soon convinced they were bound some other way and did not design to come any nearer to the shore.

With all the sail I could make, I found I should not be able to come in their way. They would be gone by before I could make any signal to them. But after I had crowded to the utmost and began to despair, they saw me by the help of their perspective glasses. So they shortened sail to let me come up. I was encouraged with this, and as I had my patron's ensign on board, I made a waft of it to them for a signal of distress and fired a gun, both which they saw. Upon these signals they very kindly brought to and lay by for me.

In about three hours' time I came up with them. They asked me what I was in Portuguese, and in Spanish, and in French, but I understood little of them. At last, a Scotch sailor who was on board called to me and I answered him and told him I was an Englishman, and I had made my escape out of slavery from the Moors at Sallee. They then bade me come on board and took me in and all my goods.

I immediately offered all I had to the captain of the ship as a return for my deliverance, but he told me he would take nothing from me. All I had should be delivered safe to me when I came to the Brasils.

"For," said he, "I have saved your life on no other terms than I would be glad to be saved myself. Besides," continued Captain Amaral, for that was his name, "when I carry you to the Brasils, if I should take from you what you have, you will be starved there, and then I only take away that life I have given. No, no, Seignior Inglese," (Mr. Englishman,) said he, "I will carry you thither in charity, and these things will help to buy your subsistence there and your passage home again."

As he was charitable in this proposal, so he was just in the performance. He ordered the seamen that none should offer to touch any thing I had. Then he took every thing into his own possession and gave me back an exact inventory of them, that I might have them, even so much as my three earthen jars.

As to my boat, it was a very good one, he saw, and told me he would buy it of me for the ship's use and asked me what I would have for it. I told him he had been so generous to me in every thing I could not offer to make any price of the boat, but left it to him, upon which he told me he would give me a note of hand to pay me eighty pieces of eight for it at Brasil. When it came there, if any one offered to give more, he would make it up.

Captain Amaral offer’d me also sixty pieces of eight more for my boy Xury. I was very loth to sell the poor boy's liberty who had assisted me so faithfully in procuring my own. Alas, the boy still often stair'd at me in fear, and had seem'd much relieved at the sight of other men, even those not of his kind. However, the captain offered me this medium, that he would give the boy an obligation to set him free in ten years, if he turned Christian. Upon my savior's kind nature, and Xury saying he was most willing to go to him, I let the captain have him.

We had a very good voyage to the Brasils, and arrived in the Bay de Todos los Santos, or All Saints' Bay, in about twenty-two days, and two before the first night of the moon. Xury had tried numerous times to tell his new master and the crew of the beast within my skin, but his poor slave's English allow'd me to brush aside his words as those of a small boy scared by the creatures of Africk. I was once more delivered from the most miserable of all conditions of life, and what to do next with myself I was now to consider.

The generous treatment Captain Amaral gave me I can never enough remember. He would take nothing of me for my passage, gave me forty ducats for the lion's skin which I had in my boat, and caused every thing I had in the ship to be delivered to me. What I was willing to sell, he bought of me. In a word, I made about two hundred and twenty pieces of eight of all my cargo, and with this stock I went on shore in the Brasils.

I had not been long here before I was recommended to the house of a good honest man who had an ingeino as they call it, that is, a plantation and a sugar-house. I lived with him some time and acquainted myself with the manner of planting and making of sugar. Seeing how well the planters lived, I resolv’d that if I could get a license to settle there, I would turn planter among them, endeavouring, in the mean time, to find out some way to get my money, which I had left in London, remitted to me. To this purpose, I purchased as much land as my money would reach and formed a plan for my plantation and settlement.

I had a neighbour, a Portuguese of Lisbon, but born of English parents, whose name was Wells, and in much such circumstances as I was. My stock was but low, as well as his. We rather planted for food than any thing else for about two years, and oft did he ignore the howls and roars that came from my estate at the time of the full moon. However, we began to increase and our land began to come into order. The third year we planted some tobacco, and made each of us a large piece of ground ready for planting canes in the year to come. But we both wanted help.

I was, in some degree, settled in my measures for carrying on the plantation before my kind friend, Captain Amaral, went back to England. When telling him what little stock I had left behind me in London, he gave me this friendly and sincere advice.

"Seignior Inglese," said he, for so he always called me, "if you will give me letters with orders to the person who has your money in London to send your effects to Lisbon, and in such goods as are proper for this country, I will bring you the produce of them, God willing, at my return. Howe'er, since human affairs are all subject to changes and disasters, I would have you give orders for but one hundred pounds sterling, which, you say, is half your stock, and let the hazard be run for the first, so if it come safe, you may order the rest the same way."

The merchant in London, vesting this hundred pounds in English goods such as the captain had wrote for, sent them to him at Lisbon and he brought them all safe to me at the Brasils. Without my direction, for I was too young in my business to think of them, he had taken care to have all sorts of tools, iron work, and utensils necessary for my plantation, and which were of great use to me.

When this cargo arrived, I thought my fortune made, for I was surprised with the joy of it. Captain Amaral had also laid out five pounds to purchase and bring me over a servant, under bond for six years' service, and would not accept of any consideration, except a little tobacco which I would have him accept, being of my own produce.

But as abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our adversity, so was it with me. I went on the next year with great success in my plantation. I raised fifty great rolls of tobacco on my own ground, more than I had disposed of for necessaries among my neighbours. These fifty rolls, being each of above a hundred weight, were well cured and laid by against the return of the fleet from Lisbon.

You may suppose, having now lived almost four years in the Brasils, and beginning to thrive and prosper very well upon my plantation, I had not only learned the language, but had contracted an acquaintance and friendship among my fellow-planters, most of whom had accept'd my unusual and monthly hermitages. In my discourses among them I had frequently given them an account of my two voyages to the coast of Guinea, and how easy it was to purchase for trifles not only gold dust and elephants' teeth, but Negroes for service in great numbers.

It happened, being in company with some merchants and planters of my acquaintance, three of them came to me the next morning and told me they had been musing very much upon what I had discoursed with them of the last night. They came to make a secret proposal to me and, after enjoining me to secrecy, they told me they had a mind to fit out a ship to go to Guinea. They had all plantations and were straitened for nothing so much as servants. As it was a trade that could not be carried on, because they could not publicly sell the Negroes when they came home, they desired to make but one voyage to bring the Negroes on shore privately and divide them among their own plantations. The question was whether I would go in the ship to manage the trading part upon the coast of Guinea. They offered me that I should have an equal share of the Negroes without providing any part of the stock.

This was a fair proposal, it must be confessed, had it been made to any one that had not a plantation of his own to look after, which was coming to be very considerable and with a good stock upon it. But for me, that was thus entered and established, and had nothing to do but go on as I had begun for three or four years more, and could scarce have failed of being worth three or four thousand pounds sterling, and that increasing too, to think of such a voyage was the most preposterous thing that ever man in such circumstances could be guilty of.

But I who was born to be my own destroyer could no more resist the offer than I could restrain my first rambling designs, when my father's good counsel was lost upon me. I told them I would go with all my heart if they would undertake to look after my plantation in my absence, and would dispose of it to such as I should direct if I miscarried. This they all engaged to do, and entered into writings or covenants to do so. I made a formal will disposing of my plantation and effects in case of my death, making Captain Amaral my universal heir.

In short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects and to keep up my plantation. Had I used half as much prudence to have looked into my own interest, and had made a judgment of what I ought to have done and not to have done, I had certainly never gone away from so prosperous an undertaking and gone a voyage to sea, attended with all its common hazards, to say nothing of those needs and hazards posed to one such as myself.

But I hurried on and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy rather than my best reason. Accordingly, the ship being fitted out, and the cargo furnished, and all things done as by agreement by my partners in the voyage, I went on board in an evil hour again, the 1st of September, 1659, being the same day eight years I went from my father and mother at Hull in order to act the rebel to their authority, and the last day of the full moon at that.

Our ship was about one hundred and twenty tons burden, carried six guns, and fourteen men, besides the master, his boy, and myself. We had on board no large cargo of goods except of such toys as were fit for our trade with the Negroes; beads, bits of glass, shells, and odd trifles, little looking-glasses, knives, scissars, hatchets, and the like. I had explain'd to the ship's master through polite discourse my occasional "fits" which would require him locking me in my cabin on some nights, and that it would please me if he and his crew paid no heed to the sounds made at these times, as I was most embarass'd by the state to which these "fits" reduced me. While he thought this odd he did not question it.

The same day I went on board, we set sail with design to stretch over for the Africkan coast. Keeping farther off at sea we lost sight of land and steered as if we were bound for the isle Fernando de Noronha, holding our course. In this course we passed the line in about twelve days' time, and were in northern latitude when a violent tornado took us quite out of our knowledge. It blew in such a terrible manner that for twelve days together we could do nothing but drive and let it carry us whither ever fate and the fury of the winds directed. During these twelve days, I need not say I expected every day to be swallowed up.

In this distress we had, besides the terror of the storm, one of our men died of the calenture and one man and the boy washed overboard. About the twelfth day, the weather abating a little, the master made an observation as well as he could and found he was in about 11 degrees north latitude, but he was 22 degrees of longitude difference, west from Cape St. Augustino. He was got upon the north part of Brasil, beyond the river Amazons, toward that of the river Oroonoque, commonly called the Great River. He consult'd with me what course he should take, for the ship was leaky and very much disabled, and he was going back to the coast of Brasil.

I was positively against that. Looking over the charts of the sea-coast of America with him, we concluded there was no inhabited country for us to have recourse to till we came within the circle of the Caribbee islands, and therefore resolv’d to stand away for Barbadoes. We could not make our voyage to the coast of Africa without some assistance, both to our ship and ourselves.

With this design, we chang’d our course, and steer’d away in order to reach some of our English islands, where I hoped for relief. But our voyage was otherwise determined, for a second storm came upon us, which carry’d us away with the same impetuosity westward and drove us so out of the very way of all human commerce. Had all our lives been saved, we were rather in danger of being devoured by savages than ever returning to our own country.

In this distress, the wind still blowing very hard, one of our men late in the day cried out, “Land!” We had no sooner run out of the cabin in hopes of seeing whereabouts in the world we were, but the ship struck upon a sand. In a moment, her motion being so stopped, the sea broke over her in such a manner we expected we should all have perish’d. We were driven into our close quarters to shelter us from the very foam and sprye of the sea.