particularly I observed a place where there had been a fire
made, and a circle dug in the earth, like a cockpit, where I
supposed the savage wretches had sat down to their human
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 it often, yet I never had so near a view
of before; in short, I turned away my face from the horrid
1
Free eBooks at
Planet eBook.com
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 uncommon violence, I
was a little relieved, but could not bear to stay in the place a
moment; so I got 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 awhile, 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 cas-
tle, 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 anything here; and having often, no doubt,
been up 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 human
creature there before; and I might be eighteen years more as
Robinson Crusoe
1
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 abhor-
rence 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 an enclosure for my
goats; for the aversion which nature gave me to these hell-
ish wretches was such, that I was as fearful of seeing them
as of seeing the devil himself. I did not so much as go to
look after my boat all this time, but began rather to think of
making 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 these creatures at sea; in
which case, 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
1
Free eBooks at
Planet eBook.com
gun, lest any of them, being on the island, should happen to
hear it. It was, therefore, a very good providence to me that
I had furnished myself with a tame breed of goats, and that
I had no need to hunt any more about the woods, or shoot
at them; and if I did catch any 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 what 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 also furbished up one of the great cutlasses that
I had out of the ship, and made me a belt to hang it on 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 broadsword 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 for-
mer calm, sedate way of living. All these things tended to
show 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 were worse, in order to be thankful, than be al-
ways comparing them with those which are better, to assist
their murmurings and complainings.
As in my present condition there were not really many
Robinson Crusoe
1
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 my-
self often for the simplicity of it: for I presently saw there
would be the want of several things necessary to the mak-
ing 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 only many days, but weeks, nay months, in at-
tempting it, but to no purpose. In the next place, I had no
hops to make it keep, no yeast to made it work, no copper
or kettle to make it boil; and yet with all these things want-
ing, I verily believe, had not the frights and terrors I was in
about the savages intervened, I had undertaken it, and per-
haps brought it to pass too; for I seldom gave anything over
without accomplishing it, when once I had it in my head
to began 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 the monsters in their cruel, bloody enter-
tainment, 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 contrivanc-
es I hatched, or rather brooded upon, in my thoughts, for
the destroying these creatures, or at least frightening them
1
Free eBooks at
Planet eBook.com
so as to prevent their coming hither any more: but all this
was abortive; nothing could be possible to take effect, un-
less 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 thought if digging a hole under the place
where they made their fire, and putting 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 unwilling to waste so much
powder upon them, my store being now within the quantity
of one 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 shot;
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 imagination that I
employed myself several days to find out proper places to
Robinson Crusoe
1
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; but while my mind was thus filled
with thoughts of revenge and a bloody putting twenty or
thirty of them to the sword, as I may call it, the horror I had
at the place, and at the signals of the barbarous wretches
devouring one another, abetted 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 their boats coming; and
might then, even before they would be ready to come on
shore, convey myself unseen into some thickets of trees, in
one of which there was a hollow large enough to conceal me
entirely; and there 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 shot, or that I could fail wounding three or
four of them at the first shot. In this place, then, I resolved
to fulfil 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 load-
ed with near a 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 of my design, and in my
imagination put it in practice, I continually made my tour
every morning to the top of the hill, which was from my cas-
tle, as I called it, about three miles or more, to see if I could
1
Free eBooks at
Planet eBook.com
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 on the whole ocean, so far as
my eye or glass could reach every way.
As long as I kept 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 out-
rageous an execution as the killing twenty or thirty naked
savages, for an offence which I had not at all entered into
any discussion of in my thoughts, any farther than my pas-
sions 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 dis-
position of the world, to have no other guide than that of
their own abominable and vitiated passions; and conse-
quently were left, and perhaps had been so for some ages, to
act such horrid things, and receive such dreadful customs,
as nothing but nature, entirely abandoned by 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 be-
gan to alter; and I began, with cooler and calmer thoughts,
to consider what 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
Robinson Crusoe
0
so many ages to suffer unpunished to go on, and to be as it
were the executioners of His judgments one upon another;
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 upon one 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 con-
sciences 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; or to eat human flesh than we do
to eat mutton.’
When I considered this a little, it followed necessarily
that I was certainly in the wrong; 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 although 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, 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 re-
ally had no knowledge of me, and consequently no design
1
Free eBooks at
Planet eBook.com
upon me; and therefore it could not be just for me to fall
upon them; that this would justify the conduct of the Span-
iards in all their barbarities practised in America, where
they destroyed millions of these people; who, however they
were idolators and barbarians, and had several bloody and
barbarous rites in their customs, such as sacrificing human
bodies to their idols, were yet, as to the Spaniards, very in-
nocent people; and that the rooting them out of the country
is spoken of with the utmost abhorrence and detestation by
even 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 for which the very name of a Spaniard is reck-
oned to be frightful and terrible, to all people of humanity
or of Christian compassion; as if the kingdom of Spain were
Dostları ilə paylaş: |